


Sunrise

by sacrificethemtothesquid



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Battle of Five Armies - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Blood and Violence, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Mutual Pining, Sex, Suicidal Ideation, Trauma, Traumatic Brain Injury
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:13:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 24
Words: 63,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28727151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sacrificethemtothesquid/pseuds/sacrificethemtothesquid
Summary: When she kisses him, he opens like the sunrise, like he's withering from thirst and her mouth is the purest spring.Sequel toStarlight.
Relationships: Kíli (Tolkien)/Tauriel (Hobbit Movies)
Comments: 87
Kudos: 100





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the fix-it fic for [Starlight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22236511/chapters/53096236). 
> 
> I _swear to god_ this time everyone actually lives. 
> 
> It's been a rough year for us all, and I started a medication last January in particular that pretty much turned me into a zombie. I'm finally off it and thrilled beyond belief to get back into this. Your lovely comments and encouragement have meant the world. I haven't forgotten my promise for a happy ending. 
> 
> I'm also drawing a complete blank on how to tag this so tags will probably change. If you think of some, please let me know.

She drifts in a cloud of perfect light, weightless, formless.

These are stars, countless in number and ageless. The first eyes to open beheld these stars. They will endure even beyond the last breath. She is in them, of them, surrounded and cradled. 

There is no conscious thought, only a complete and overwhelming bliss. 

But...no. Not complete.

It cannot be named. Words are too abstract. It’s only a sense of creeping absence, a rippling discomfort through her white-gold corona. These are stars, every one precious and pure.

And yet, none of them are hers. 

She is not meant to go turn from this path. Somewhere beyond are the halls of her forebears, an endless comfort where she will be welcomed with song and joy, but she has never been content to sit and listen to pretty song. She remembers no forebears. She would have no peace without her missing star.

There is still time to coalesce and so she turns her will toward it. It feels like drowning, an excruciating crawl back to air. Every breath is made of heavy sand, her lungs atrophied and unable to swell, but even now, she is incandescent, fierce and unstoppable as the break of dawn. 

She leaves the light behind without even a shiver of regret. 

* * *

Everything hurts, a cacophony of pain, a thousand discordant notes shrieking in unison. Everything is too bright. Everything is too loud. 

For a long moment, she thinks only of her breath, and finally the world goes still. 

“Tauriel,” someone says and yes, that’s her name. She remembers. She is something with a name. A being? A person.

If she is a person, perhaps she too can speak. “...Tauriel.” It’s little more than a whisper. 

Someone peers down at her - a cascade of blond hair, blue eyes pinched with what she thinks is concern. A smile? Yes. “You yet live.”

“...I live.”

“Do you know me?”

So familiar, both the face and the voice. Familiar. Loved? Concepts form in her mind but diffuse, like sunlight burning through a winter fog. A friend. “Legolas?”

A wider smile, redolent of joy and relief beyond measure. “ _Mellon-nin_. Tell me something only you would know.”

A question. Difficult, but not impossible. The fog is lifting. She can see the thoughts as they form, paths like rivulets of snowmelt. “...I...am a better shot...than you.”

He laughs. “This is an argument we have had many times. Do you remember?”

“Someday...you will lose.”

“Today is not that day.” He shifts, and positions take shape: she’s lying on her back. He’s sitting by her side. Bed? She is in bed. “How do you feel?”

An accounting. She isn’t sure how she’s _supposed_ to feel. She thinks perhaps her limbs are not as well-attached as they ought to be. There’s a stillness in her back - or is it her legs? She can see legs which logically might be hers, but if she commands them to move, they do not. She tilts her head and- no, that was a mistake. A constellation of pain blooms behind her eyes. She observes it as it happens, aware of the visceral attack but somehow still distant. She blinks and somehow, that helps. 

Legolas is looking at her expectantly. A question. He asked her a question and she must be taking too long to answer because he asks it again, this time in softer, more gentle tones: “Are you in pain?”

“...I think so.”

He immediately reaches beyond her view and brings back a bowl - she knows it’s a bowl - and a deep spoon. “Do not move,” he says, bringing the spoon to her lips. 

She’s still trying to comprehend the relationship between the spoon and not moving, but her body knows what she does not and accepts a mouthful of water. No, not water. She tastes herbs, fresh and clean. She blinks again and the pain in her head recedes. 

“Better?” Legolas asks. 

She closes her eyes to formulate an answer, but when she opens them again, the room is dark, the only light from softly-shining lamps. Her body has changed. She feels as if she’s a great stone trapped beneath a glacier, her bones grinding beneath its inexorable pace. She isn’t sure if she can label the sensation _pain_. It feels more like...pressure, deep and primal, her marrow being forced into spaces where there isn’t room. “Legolas?”

“Here I am.”

“I am injured.”

“You are healing.”

“I do not understand.”

“You were dying when you were found.”

She remembers that, or part of it. There was cold and numbness, a band like iron around her lungs. Blood-slick and somehow, peace. She remembers the peace. “I am still here?”

“If you truly meant to leave, you would have gone.” Something darkens in his face - grief. She recognizes grief. She carries her own, although its source is somehow shadowed and hidden. “I am grateful you stayed.”

She sleeps, and then wakes deep in the night to an unfamiliar face once again spooning the broth of spring into her mouth. She swallows without recognition, and sleeps.

Once again she wakes. What could be called pain is now slowly melting into warmth. A voice, singing softly above her:

_Mend what was sundered_

_Spin what needs wound_

_Heal what was plundered_

_Bind what needs bound._

She feels vines seeking paths through her body, tendrils curling to become strong, woody stems. Water wears away lifeless stone, breaking open cracks for eager roots. Structure returns to barren dust, clay swelling with fresh rain. 

She sleeps. 

* * *

It’s late afternoon when Tauriel comes back to herself fully. 

Legolas is there, seated in a wooden chair nearby, reading by the light of a tall window and languid in a way that suggests he’s been there several hours. The room is of cream-colored stone, glowing from a red winter sun. It is a beautiful space, marred only by a broken pane in the window and an absence of anything that might be considered a domestic comfort. A fire crackles from a hearth at the edge of her vision. 

She opens her mouth to say his name, but all that comes out is a hoarse croak. Her lungs go hollow as if they’ve never once held breath, and she remembers, dreamlike, the taste of blood in her mouth, icy pebbles pressed against her cheek.

As she coughs, a cup is held to her lips. She gulps with the animal instinct of a brook trout, warmth surging down her throat and into her belly, carrying with it the deep indolence of a perfect summer day. 

She finds herself leaning forward in bed as Legolas supports her, one arm firm around her shoulders while the other offers the cup. Blinking through fading stars, she turns her head, summoning what breath she has left. “Legolas…”

“Drink again,” he says, and she does. 

Slowly, her mind clears and her heart slows its pounding. He adjusts the pillows so she’s more upright and gently lays her back.

“How do you feel?” he asks.

She considers. In honesty, she feels off-balance, as if the horizon has tilted and she hasn’t yet found her footing. It’s strange and more than a little frightening. Now that she has a moment, she can see the room is obviously not one of Elven make. The window and its syrupy sunset precludes Dwarven. They live under stone, under the mountain-

“Dale?” she rasps. “Is this Dale?”

“Yes.” 

She lets her eyes wander around the room. A bare table and cushionless bench is pushed into the far corner. Cobwebs cluster near the ceiling. “Spiders,” she observes. 

“Dol Guldur is cleansed. Gandalf gave a full accounting.” He moves to wrap her hands around the cup. “Can you hold this? You should drink.”

Her fingers feel distant and cold, but after a moment, they obey her command. Shakily, she swallows again. She can’t immediately identify the herbs, all of them strong and bright.

Legolas is still watching her carefully. He’s waiting for something. Has he asked a question she hasn’t answered? She takes another sip. 

“This is Dale,” she tries. 

“Yes,” he repeats, but the look intensifies. It’s as if he’s bracing himself. 

Something tickles the back of her mind, like a cough that hasn’t yet burst forth. “Dale.”

At that moment, her eyes are drawn to the window and its broken pane. Curling frost coats the glass, but through the tiny square of sky, a peak rises up tall and sharp. Near its tip, a pale star flickers in the coming dusk. 

A sensation like a catching thorn rakes across her senses. “ _Kili_.”

“He lives,” Legolas says quickly, and this is clearly what he’s been waiting for. He leans toward her, palms open as if he’s afraid she’s going to leap. “They all live.”

“Kili,” she says again, a hard surge of panic rushing up her throat. “Where is he? Where can I find him?”

“He remains in Erebor. You will see him.”

Memory comes back in a churning flood, moments like ice that careen by too quickly for focus. She claws at them with no success. “He went- and _Bolg_ \- I heard-”

“Bolg is dead,” Legolas says firmly. “As is his father Azog.”

“ _Bats_ -” 

“The bats are dead.”

“Kili.” She casts about for something solid, something upon which to form a coherent question. She has no name for the wild need in her heart. “How?”

So Legolas explains the final battle, the bleak desperation until the great eagles and the skinchanger came in from the west. He tells of the rally, of Dwarves and Elves and Men taking every Orc to slaughter and losing many of their own in return. He describes the moment Azog and Thorin fell upon each other’s blades, and how the might of Dwarven spirit overcame the bitter force of evil. “I saw it, Tauriel. Thorin took Azog and cast him off the mountain. He fell almost to the valley floor. Nothing of his body remained unbroken.”

“And Kili?”

Legolas hesitates. “He took great injury meant for his uncle, but he lives and will recover.” There’s a pause, as if he’s considering his next words. “He told us where you lay. Without his help, you could not have been saved.”

“Saved,” she echoes, the word rough in her throat. 

“To live or to die was your choice,” he says quietly. “ _Mellon-nin_ , I have sat vigil these ten days in great fear. I could not have borne your loss.”

Ten days. An impossible length of time for Elven healing and yet even with the powerful tincture, she feels weak. 

The room is in Dale. She is in Dale. Not Mirkwood. 

The rising grief must show in her face, because Legolas’s lips go thin. “My father sent a small company of healers to tend to the people of Dale.” 

“The healer-”

“The king said you were banished. He did not say you should be left to die.” His eyebrows come together in sadness. “Tauriel, I will speak to him, I swear to you. He can be convinced-”

Her vision goes blurry and she thinks she’s passing out until the sob wrenches itself from her chest. Distantly, she feels the cup gently taken from her hands and set aside. Legolas is the closest thing she has to family, but they have never been physically affectionate. He’s the prince and she’s merely a soldier. Propriety must be maintained, but now he eases into bed beside her, settling his back against the headboard and gently taking her in his arms, resting his chin on her head. He smells like moss and smoke, a heady combination so beloved that any control she might have aspired to is swept away. 

She weeps until all that’s left are quiet little tears. She realizes that not once has he made a quip or joke, and the strength of his embrace is as much for his own reassurance as it is for hers. A small shiver runs through him: he’s weeping too, softly, soundlessly. 

Tauriel can endure pain. She can endure the tangled paths of her confusion. With great effort, she can endure her wild need to rush to Kili’s side. She cannot endure this. 

Legolas is her friend. He came to her when she was a child feral with grief and sat with her in all the decades after. He put a bow in her hands and guided her aim, and did the same with her blades when she was old enough to wield them. He suffers his father’s capricious moods with a smile and good-natured humility. He followed her to Lake-town despite Thranduil’s explicit order. He never questioned her sudden and overwhelming passion for a Dwarf, nor did he question the moment she’d aimed an arrow at her king. If he’s grieved her choices, he’s done so in private. 

And yet, she will go to Kili. This is not in question. Both she and Legolas know it. As soon as she can, she’ll make her way into the mountain or across Arda or to the white plain of the moon if that’s what it will take to find her love. She will have two short centuries - perhaps half again more, if they’re very, very lucky - and every part of her aches with urgency. 

She will go to Kili and cling to the smallest moment, but he will die and she will be returned to Elvenkind to subsist on grief. Two hundred years is nothing for an Elf, especially held against Legolas’s two thousand. It means everything to her so he cannot deny her. It also means he will have to watch her come back, and perhaps that’s his greatest sorrow. 

Tauriel can’t think of anything to say, so she just leans against her friend and closes her eyes.

* * *

In the morning, she ventures out of bed - slowly, painfully, most of her weight on Legolas’s arm - to a prepared bath. Elves rarely see each other nude, but there isn’t any shame in it, so he drags up a chair and watches like a hawk to catch any impending faint. 

It’s _wonderful_ to have a bath. Tauriel’s entire body feels like a clenched fist and in the heat of the water, some of the tension melts, allowing for a brief inventory of the violence done her. Fading scars twist across her ribs. Bruises still linger under her skin, the halo of their color barely discernible. There’s a sensation adjacent to pain in her spine, something like weak fabric that might start to rip if she twists without thought. 

Elves recover quickly and it’s been a tenday since the battle. By all accounts, she should not be alive. It will take more than a few hours to catalog her hurts. 

“Surely you cannot here to be my nursemaid,” Tauriel teases, but the look in Legolas’s eyes dispenses any humor. Something cold slithers in her belly. “The healers could not stay.”

“The people of Dale have enough of their own wounded,” he says quietly. “You need only rest now. I would not leave you in their charge when the rest of our kin have returned to Mirkwood. I have helped with the rebuilding as I can, but you have been my charge.”

She wraps her arms around her knees, slowly leaning forward to gauge her range of movement as she considers her next words. She finds both lacking. “What are the consequences?”

“My consequences are my own.”

“ _Mellon-nin_ , I will not have you outlaw yourself on my account.”

Legolas’s expression is inscrutable.

“Please.”

There’s another moment of silence, and then he leans forward to press his lips to her forehead. It drops her back to her earliest memories of him, sparking up emotion she hasn’t let herself feel in centuries. “I would not have you sorry for me, Tauriel.”

Tears well up, sharp and deep. 

“Besides,” he adds lightly, “without your competition, I remain the best archer in Mirkwood.”

* * *

Her body has forgotten how to move. Every step is a thick and clumsy thing, her feet unsure of their place. Tauriel reaches for a cup and her fingers knock it back. She fumbles with buttons, agonizes at the laces of her boots. Her strength will return. She’s Elven, after all. She just has to be gentle with herself as she heals.

Legolas says nothing of her decision to travel. They both know it’s unwise, but she has breath and is upright and can wait no longer. Every moment away from Kili swells in her chest, a hot, choking mass of emotion too thick to swallow back.

“I will go with you as far as the gates of Erebor,” Legolas says. “Whether or not they will welcome us in, I cannot say.”

She knows. It sits in her stomach like an uneaten meal. 

“Gold would be nice,” he adds, slotting the blades she can’t hold into their sheathes at her back. “Silver does not suit you.”

“Payment-”

“I do not speak of payment.” His eyes twinkle. “Will he not give you pretty beads for your hair?”

For a long moment, she cannot breathe, and then they’re both laughing, soft and pure as they ever have. It hurts, both in her chest and in her heart. 

* * *

A hundred years might be nothing to the life of an Elf, but the time to Erebor on horseback feels like that and more. Tauriel is exhausted even before Legolas boosts her into the saddle and by the time they’re trotting up to the mountain gates, she is sunk so deep inside herself that he has to reach over and tug her reins so she actually stops. 

“Who comes to Erebor?” a voice rings out in a heavy Dwarven brogue. 

“Legolas of Mirkwood,” Legolas calls back. “And Tauriel.” Not of Mirkwood. Daughter of no one, including the beloved forest that sheltered her for so long. “We seek audience with the King Under The Mountain.”

Every fiber of her body aches. Thorin will recognize her as his jailer. There is very little hope that she will be permitted to see Kili and even less hope for the things she dares not name. 

She fell in love with Thranduil’s enemy and was banished for it. She cannot imagine Thorin’s reaction will be much different. 

Tauriel tells herself she just wants to ensure Kili is alive. She vaguely remembers the gold of his armor glinting amid blowing snow and the sudden warmth of his body even through his mail. If she closes her eyes, she can summon the memory of the smell of his sweat, battle-bright and heady.

If she closes her eyes, there is a strong chance she’s going to fall off her horse. 

Legolas leans over to give the animal a reassuring pat on its neck. He’s always been much more fond of horses than she has, and whatever anxiety Tauriel is passing to the animal is immediately eased. “Have strength,” he murmurs. The words are, perhaps, also for her.

Time stretches away. She concentrates on the brisk air on her skin, the sharp winter breeze in her hair. There is no more of the strong herbal tincture and frustration fills its place. All the strength it imparted has made its mark; it’s up to her own flesh now, but of whatever virtues Tauriel may claim, patience will never be included.

Finally, an older Dwarf walks out of the looming gate, his long white beard naked of any adornment. His robes are rich without being ostentatious, lending him an air of strong, practical wisdom. He seems to know Legolas, who easily slides off his horse to greet him. “Legolas Greenleaf. I have been told you seek an audience with Thorin.”

“Indeed,” Legolas says, and glances at Tauriel. “Although I am merely an escort in this matter. Tauriel, this is Balin.”

She recognizes him as the closest of Thorin’s advisors, the one who despite much effort couldn’t convince his king to accept Thranduil’s offer. He recognizes her immediately, and his demeanor changes. “ _You_ are Tauriel.”

Legolas makes a small gesture unseen except to her, and she carefully tilts down into his arms. It’s a skillful movement, presenting a far greater facade of strength than actually exists. She is painfully grateful. 

Tauriel is tired and frustrated and _weak_. She’s clinging to the only fragment of self-control she still possesses, but a great reservoir of tears hangs behind her eyes, ready to burst forth at the slightest provocation. This isn’t who she is. She’s Thranduil’s captain, a being of confidence and power. Through years of great effort, she’s crafted herself into someone dependable and competent, someone trusted to guard the forests around her home, someone who can put an arrow in a spider’s eye before it can twitch. 

No, not a captain. Not anymore. She’s given everything for Kili and she wildly craves a moment, just a single moment, to take his face in her hands and kiss him. 

As she steels herself for an onslaught of righteous anger from the Dwarf, she’s startled when he takes three steps forward and catches her hands in his own. “You above all others are most welcome here.”

The confusion must show in her face, because Balin smiles and gives her hands a gentle shake. “We have heard much of your aid.”

“I imprisoned you.”

“And saved our young prince,” he says. “Thrice, by his reckoning.”

“He lives?” 

“The line of Durin remains unbroken,” Balin assures her, and the relief is so great she sways a little. Legolas immediately puts a hand at her elbow. Balin misses nothing. “And yourself,” he says soberly, “we had not heard whether you lived.”

Her throat is too tight to speak, so Legolas smoothly breaks in. “I must return to my father. I will speak to him about aid.”

Balin’s eyes flick from Tauriel to Legolas. “I would not expect such,” he says, “although we would accept it with gratitude.” He looks again at Tauriel. “I imagine the lad will insist you reside with us for a time.”

“I would not impose,” she says, even though she has no other choice. “But I would be grateful.”

“No imposition at all,” Balin assures her. 

Legolas ties the horses together with quick, practiced economy. Aside to her, he says quietly, “I cannot bring you back with me.”

“I know.” She will not cry. She won’t.

“I will return when I can. This is not the last time we see each other.”

“There is nowhere else I can be.” Tauriel is homeless, and more than that, Kili is here. Wherever he is is the only place she can draw breath. “Thank you, _mellon-nin_.”

He smiles, mounting his horse with ease, and there’s such sweet sadness there that she almost succumbs to the ready well of tears. “Be well, Tauriel.”

Tauriel, not of Mirkwood, where every branching path leads away from its crux. Time will not let her retrace her steps, and though she’s certain this is not the end of their long friendship, something about the farewell seems final, an explicit demarcation between who she was and who she is now to be. 

When Legolas is far down the path, she turns back to Balin. The old Dwarf inclines his head toward the hall. “Welcome to Erebor.”


	2. Chapter 2

Tauriel isn’t prepared to walk, but she puts one foot in front of the other and forbids herself to fall. Still, when she walks into the entry to the kingdom of Erebor, she almost swoons in shock. 

She doesn’t know what she expected. The Dwarves are short, so perhaps their home would be dense as a rabbit warren, dark and rank with forge smoke. The halls of the Elvenking rise amid root and stone, but this - this is nothing like the delicate flow of Elven architecture. 

Erebor _soars_. Pillars taller than the greatest trees of Mirkwood disappear into blackness, each shaped as perfectly as the next in rows that seem to stretch out forever. Just this moment, just this single wonder - it’s so overwhelming, so utterly unlike what she’s expected and assumed, that her mind goes completely still and she suddenly understands the Dwarves’ ache for homecoming. 

“This is only the front door,” Balin chuckles. “Wait ‘til you see what’s truly inside.”

So Tauriel follows. Dwarves from the Iron Hills are hauling away debris and every single one turns to nakedly stare as she passes. At best, she represents a presence grudgingly tolerated - not an ally, never an ally - and at worst, she is a hated enemy, a reminder of the men they lost to Thranduil’s army. She draws herself inward, keeping her back straight and her head level, drawing up every measure of grace she can muster and gritting her teeth against her unsteadiness, focusing on the movement of one foot in front of the next. 

Balin seems to understand her struggle and slows his pace, strolling as if giving her a leisurely tour. “These are the halls of my fathers,” he says, and looks over at her. “I had given up hope of ever seeing them again.”

Thranduil was adamant that the Dwarves brought this disaster upon themselves, that their greed caused their tragedy. Tauriel doesn’t believe it, not anymore, not since Kili grinned up at her through the bars of his cell. 

_Starlight._

She has nothing left, no king, no home, nothing but her blades and something too wild and fierce to be called love. “All are well?” she tries, but it comes out like a hoarse cough. 

“The line of Durin has not failed,” Balin says, and then shakes his head. “Not yet, anyway.”

“Not yet?” There’s something in his tone that pins her like ice. 

“Aye. Many suffered grievous injury during the conflict. Thorin and his nephews were not spared, though they yet live.”

“Fili lives?” She has a faint memory - barely more than a dream - of Kili sobbing into her shoulder, choking on his brother’s name. 

“Praise Durin.” Balin shakes his head. “Whether he will survive further, I do not know, but for now he has breath and that is far better than we feared.”

“The king?”

Balin snorts. “He took a dozen hits that would each have killed a lesser Dwarf and came away standing.”

“And Kili?” The name comes out as a whisper. 

“He charged to Thorin’s defense and nearly drowned for it.” His keen eyes miss nothing, including the tears that threaten to fall. “He is healing.”

She nods, swallowing hard. 

“And...I mean no offense, but you do not look well yourself.”

All the words in Common and Sindarin are useless. What she feels is nothing compared to her need to see Kili. She cannot explain it, the fierce ache, the naked, Dwarflike greed that drove her away from the light of her ancestors. “I was wounded. I did not know if any had lived. I-”

“He has, ah, spoken your name many times,” Balin says. His tone indicates it was several more than _many_ , and her heart leaps in her throat. “You are most welcome.” Almost under his breath, he adds, “It will bring all of us some much-needed peace.”

She’s so afraid she’s imagined the affection. Her knuckles clench white around the runestone in her pocket, but the battle is over and Erebor reclaimed. She’s been afraid she’s nothing to him, a figment of fever, and if she is, she will go back into the valley and die. “I am grateful.”

They wind further and further down into the mountain. Tauriel has never considered herself fearful of heights, but Erebor drops away to the center of the earth. If she looks down, she’s going to fall, so she just keeps her eyes on the back of Balin’s head and its cloud of stiff white hair. 

Is this what Kili will look like in the centuries to come? A pale halo to catch the light, constellations of liver spots blooming on face and hands. She thinks about lying in bed with him and counting the stars on his skin, each one precious beneath her hands.

“He has not left his brother’s side,” Balin says. He stops as they enter a hallway, turning to her with a grave expression. “These are difficult times. Do not take him away from us.”

Tauriel frowns until understanding flashes through her body like a cold sweat. “No,” she breathes. 

Balin is still looking at her steadily.

“I cannot take him away,” she says. She’d watched Kili and Fili together in Lake-town, how they leaned on each other and took care of each other. It’s so integral to who Kili is. She could no sooner sever him from his family than slice off his arm. “I would not. I give you my word.”

She made herself homeless. She cannot bring him the same pain. 

There’s a long moment of silence, and then Balin inclines his head in acceptance. “This is not an easy path you tread.”

“It is not,” Tauriel agrees. She cannot swallow back the burr of tears. “I do not do it lightly.”

They walk on, the smooth stone walls echoing back their footsteps. 

* * *

Finally, Balin comes to a tall wooden door set with ornate iron hinges. Through it, Tauriel finds a large chamber and beyond, a wide balcony with thick balustrades open to the endless cavern below. Candles flicker from an assortment of sconces and holders. As she steps inside, she finds it well-appointed with a deep hearth and a collection of wooden furniture crafted in the heavy, angular style the Dwarves so favor. A table creaks under a wide assortment of hospital supplies: rolls of fresh bandages, bowls of half-dried poultice, phials both empty and full. A plate with a half-eaten wedge of cheese and a badly-browned apple molders amid several bunches of dried herbs. More herbs and a mortar and pestle balance on the seat of the nearest chair, over the back of which hangs a series of bandages clearly washed and set to dry. A dense herbal pall hangs over the room. It is silent, the fire gone to embers, until a barking cough echoes from the next room. 

“This way,” Balin says and turns to a wide doorway she hadn’t seen. Inside, she first sees a carven stone bed against one wall. Her heart stutters in her chest: nestled amid furs amid the glow of candlelight, the occupant of the closest is recognizable only by his flaxen hair: Fili. His face is a mottle of greening bruises, eyes still swollen shut and lips cracked. He has bandages about his neck and chest and another wrapped around his forehead. Only the slow rise and fall of his breath marks him as anything more than dead.

“You awake, laddie?” Balin calls quietly into the room. “I’ve brought a visitor.”

Three aching heartbeats pass before a raw cry breaks out and Kili stumbles from the other bed - wooden, solid but mismatched, obviously temporary - half-tripping amid tangled bedclothes as he launches himself toward her. “ _Tauriel!_ ”

At once he’s clutching her so tightly she hopes to never breathe again. It _hurts_ , the tender parts shrieking against such force, but he’s here, he’s in her arms and nothing else matters. Everything crashes down upon her, all the barriers Tauriel has struggled to maintain exploding violently at his touch. She presses her face down into his hair, inhaling his sweet, heavy musk, and then utterly breaks. 

Somewhere buried deep within her is a memory of fire, of wild grief, of screaming and screaming until all that came out was silence. There are no faces, no names, nothing but a maelstrom of smoke and ash and anonymous arms wrapping her in damp blankets that did nothing to quench the pain. She doesn’t recall words, just the gaping agony of begging and pleading for a faceless someone who never came. 

The burns healed, her Elven lineage erasing them from her skin down to the last shadow, but her body still remembers what her mind cannot. It has bubbled up twice now: the flight from Laketown and now, here in Kili’s arms, a wail of helplessness against the indifferent path of fate. She cannot be here. She cannot possibly be alive. It’s beyond all sense and reason, an animal instinct howling from tender depths. She has clawed her way back from a death that should by all rights have bound her to find the man she loves - this beautiful, impossible man - and press him shuddering against her heart.

He pulls back a little, bringing his hands up to her face and the flood of tears, and then wraps her back into his arms. “You’re here,” he’s saying hoarsely. “You’re really here.”

Distantly, she hears Balin murmur from the door, “I take my leave.”

Kili. It’s _Kili_. 

Want surges up and she brings his face to hers, desperately searching for his lips. He responds immediately, a hot, hungry kiss so fierce all of her doubts flare away like steam. He presses his forehead to her chest, breathing hard. “I thought I’d lost you,” he croaks. “I thought you were _dead_...”

She’d speak if she could, but she can’t. She can’t even breathe. She can only cling to him like the nearly-drowned cling to dry land.

“Let me look at you,” Kili entreats, and Tauriel forces herself half a step back. Once, he’d sat entranced, listening greedily to her voice in the dark of a dungeon, and now it’s that again but tenfold, a hundredfold, the sun to a flickering candle, a starving man brought suddenly into a sumptuous feast. Tears collect in his beard, glistening like stars. 

_Starlight._

She reaches out, putting a trembling hand to the scabbed, jagged gash that runs from his forehead to his collarbone, crosscut with sutures. The fact that he still has an eye is nothing short of a miracle, and just now, she threw herself so heedlessly at him-

“A scratch,” he says quickly, and catches her hands. “It’s nothing, nothing.”

The world goes blurry and she finds herself on the edge of his bed, Kili clutching at her arms. She can’t stop weeping and she can’t breathe, any air transformed into a silent, shuddering sob. He kisses her, forehead, cheeks, the tops of her knuckles and center of her palms, over and over like a precious ritual.

Finally, she’s down to quiet little hiccups, leaning her forehead down against his shoulder and feeling utterly boneless, useless and unwilling to do anything more than savor the warmth and life in his thick body. “ _Gilith_ …”

“I left you,” he says hoarsely. “I left you there.”

Reaching into her pocket, Tauriel pulls out the runestone and curls his fingers around it, bringing his hand up to her lips. “I came when I could,” she rasps. “I did not know how much time had passed.”

Something dawns in his eyes. “No,” he says, his hand spasming in hers, and quickly covers with a humorless, disbelieving chuckle. “The Elves have such magic. You saved me from certain fate in a single _day_. It’s not possible.”

She looks down at her lap. 

“Tauriel.” He shifts, wincing at some hidden, half-healed wound, and touches her chin to turn her face back to his. “It’s been almost a _fortnight_. What are you saying?”

“I am sorry.” She’s thought herself wrung utterly dry, but a fresh spring of tears wells up. 

“You’re still unwell.” He tucks the runestone back in her hands and starts to check her over, forehead, shoulders, as if he can somehow see the damage still lingering beneath her skin. “I _left_ you-”

“Everyone would be dead,” she says fiercely. “You, your uncle, Fili - everyone. I would do it a thousand times if it meant you would live.”

“You _won’t_ do it again,” he responds with equal passion. “It won’t happen like that. It won’t.”

Still the tears come. “Who can say?”

There’s no counterpoint. There cannot be. They are both warriors, but this is the first time they’ve truly understood the cost. Instead, he just wraps his arms tightly around her. “ _Amrâlimê_.” 

Such a beautiful word. It cannot be said without taking on the tone of a whisper, a prayer, a lullaby. In Sindarin, the equivalent is perhaps _gi malen_ , but despite all instinct, the Khuzdul is far more intimate. A precious, priceless gift, these four syllables from a language the Dwarves guard even more closely than their gold.

He coughs, deep and sharp. The sound suddenly paralyzes her, the memory of him bucking beneath her hands rising up in an overwhelming flood. “Tauriel,” Kili says, and then again, softly, “It’s nothing. I'm healing. Everyone says so.”

“It is _not_ nothing-”

“ _Apparently_ ,” he says, one corner of his mouth twisting up, “my greatest foe was, in fact, a lake.”

“You jest.”

“I remember little,” he admits. “I’m told Dwalin fished me out blue as lapis, but I like to think of it as a warrior's bath.”

His voice is light, but in his face she sees none of the mischievous boy from Thranduil’s dungeons. She sees only a tired fighter, a man made somber by the battlefield. Shadowed eyes keep flicking over at Fili’s still form and his grip on her arms is bruising. 

“How is he?” she asks. 

He shudders in her arms. “He- he fell. Right in front of me, he fell. He hasn’t woken yet.” He looks back up at her, pleading. “What you did for me-”

She would. If she were handed a bundle of athelas right at this moment, she’d pour her entire being into it until Kili’s brother became whole and hale. She would drain herself like a wineskin and become a husk if it could at all help. 

She has barely enough to live herself. A sensation of pinpricks darts up her spine like centipedes from a nest and she shifts a little from the pain. Kili notices immediately. “Tauriel, what happened to you? I left-”

“You carry no blame,” she says. “It was ill luck.”

“Bolg-”

“If you hadn’t gone,” she says quietly. “Your uncle and your brother would be dead.”

He knows that. She can see it in his face, a naked war that brings tears to his hollow cheeks. “I could never choose between you.”

“If you became king-”

“ _Amrâlimê_ ,” he says. “I would be king of nothing without you.”

“You cannot say that.”

“ _No._ I would rather have you than all the gold in Erebor.”

The infamous, beloved greed of the Dwarves. 

“I was afraid,” she says, swallowing against a hard quaver. “I was so afraid.”

His own face gleams with his own fear, uncertain as a new moon. He sucks in a breath, but that sets off another bout of coughing. “You should rest,” she makes herself say, gently pushing him back against the pillow and collecting the bedclothes. 

“Stay,” Kili says hoarsely. “I _need_ you to stay.”

After a moment’s hesitation, she curls up tightly against him, her head tucked into his shoulder. His hand immediately sinks into her hair, a hard, anxious grip that borders on the edge of pain. 

It’s everything she’s ever wanted. She may be outcast, she may be banished from the paths and streams of her beloved Mirkwood, but in the deepest, most visceral part of her, here beside Kili feels like coming home. 

* * *

Some time later, Tauriel starts awake to the sound of footsteps. She hadn’t even realized she was sleeping. Kili coughs but doesn’t stir. 

“By my beard,” Oin says in wonder. She sits up in alarm, unsure if she’s violated more propriety than by simply being here, but he waves her concerns aside. “No, stay, stay. To be honest, I expected you earlier.”

“I came as soon as I was able.”

She can see him doing the calculations. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he finally says. “Are you well recovered?”

She hesitates a moment too long, unsure of how to answer. She hurts. The ride from Dale was a poor decision. The horse, though gentle and well-trained, did her no kindness, but she couldn’t have walked. Even the brief journey from the front gate of Erebor to this infirmary has left her aching and exhausted. 

“I could wait no longer,” she says instead, and traces a curl away from Kili’s face. “How is he?”

“A terrible patient,” the Dwarf says frankly. “He took a blow meant for his uncle. Dwalin says that action alone saved the battle. We Dwarves are hardy folk, but even we can’t escape the heavy cost of such things.” He shakes his head, and nods toward Fili. “More blood on them than in them, the daft pair.”

“Kili said he hasn’t woken.”

“Aye. Naught to do but treat him best we can and wait.”

“Legolas said he would speak to the king,” she says, putting a hand on Kili’s chest to still a bout of coughing. “He will send healers.”

The cough stutters and then Kili jerks upright, gasping and heaving, his whole body twisting at each choked-off breath. For one wild moment, his eyes meet hers and she sees nothing but terror. When it’s over, she pulls him against her chest, his hands fisting at her tunic. 

“Here, lad.” Oin offers a mug of something steaming and astringent. Kili’s hands are shaking so badly Tauriel takes it and lifts it to his lips. “Should help you breathe a bit easier.” He eyes the two of them. “I must attend to Bifur’s leg, but I will return.”

“How is he?” Kili croaks. 

“The infection is fading, thank Durin. With a little time and luck he’ll walk soon. Same can be said of you - rest those damp lungs, lad. You know what needs to be done. You’ll do yourself no favors otherwise.”

Kili nods and sags against Tauriel. As soon as Oin leaves, they lie back down. She tucks him under her chin, his forehead overwarm against her chest. “I am going to court you,” he rasps. “I will fill your arms with flowers.”

“What need would I have of flowers?” she asks gently. “You are here already.”

He shifts to look up at her, coughs, and when he catches his breath, a tear starts a slow slide down his face. “When I am well…”

“You will be well.”

“I would make you a princess.”

Something inside her shudders. “Do not speak of such things.”

“I will speak of it.” He threads his fingers through hers. “I loved you the moment I saw you, Tauriel. I will not turn aside.” Sudden anxiety fills his face. “But if I presume-”

“You presume nothing that is not true.” She touches her lips against his forehead. He still looks stricken, so she reaches into a pocket and draws out the runestone again, pressing it to his palm. “Was this not a promise?”

His eyes well up. “It was,” he says fiercely. “It _is_.”

“It is my promise as well.”

“I will not let them stand between us.” It’s her greatest fear, now that she’s found him alive. He mistakes her silence for hesitation. “ _Amrâlimê_ ,” he entreats, “I will convince them. I will not let us be parted. Have we not already promised each other?”

Elves love once in their infinite lives. Every moment they’re together is one closer to an inevitable heartache but she has never been so certain in all her centuries. “I do not think others will honor that.”

“We will _make_ them honor it.” He coughs. “I will fight anyone who dares stand against us.”

The thought of Thranduil and Thorin and all the others facing down a fragile Elf and a breathless Dwarf in earnest rebellion is so ridiculous, she can’t help a bubble of nervous laughter. 

“I will do it,” he repeats, but there’s a smile tugging at his lips and oh, there’s still a shadow of the mischievous boy somewhere inside him. She kisses his forehead again and they curl together like field mice in a burrow, clinging tightly. 


	3. Chapter 3

Somewhere, the sun is drifting into late afternoon, but they sleep like it’s deep midnight. The day’s efforts were far more than Tauriel should have attempted, and more than that, Kili is pressed up against her, warm and alive and _here_. Her heart is so full she can barely breathe. 

She’s caught in a diffuse golden haze, a sense of perfect rest, when she hears a new voice, soft and commanding.

Thorin. “How is he?”

Kili somehow rose while she slept and is stretched out in a chair beside his brother’s bed. He leans forward into his uncle’s waiting hands. Nothing is said, just the movement of Thorin’s fingers in Kili’s shaggy hair. 

“There is time,” Thorin says softly. “Where there is breath, there is hope.”

Kili makes a watery noise in his throat, and then coughs. 

When he’s recovered, Thorin glances over and sees Tauriel. There’s a long moment of confusion until recognition crashes across his face, and the word comes from deep in his chest like grinding stone. “ _You._ ”

She means to stand, but the tenuous threads of connection between her legs and her head falter. She grabs at the headboard and misses, tumbling against the wall. It _hurts_ , a sharp burst from her toes to her throat, and she can’t help the small noise she makes. 

Elves don’t fall. Once, she could balance on a single stone with the greatest of ease, and now she’s fallen. It’s so completely alien to Thorin’s understanding of Elven grace that it arrests him mid-thought. The bloom of anger turns to consternation and in that moment of pause, Kili launches himself after Tauriel, hefting her back onto the bed with a stricken expression.

She’s so lost in humiliation she can’t even speak. She wants to grab at Kili, to pull him against her and breathe in his solid strength until the room stops spinning, but Thorin is staring and any physical contact seems far, far too intimate. 

It’s not stopping Kili, though. He keeps one arm around her. “Uncle-”

“What is the meaning of this?” Thorin’s tone is one of utter bewilderment. “Kili. Explain.”

“This is Tauriel,” Kili says earnestly. “She was a guard-”

“I remember her locking us up. What is she doing here?”

“She came for me.” He glances at her almost guiltily. “I mean-”

“She came for you?”

Kili has no art for subtlety, so Tauriel quickly breaks in. “I came to assure myself of the condition of the lords under the mountain.”

“Since when do your people care for our condition?”

She swallows hard. This is everything she has feared. Her confrontation with Thranduil had been brought amid the pounding of war drums, when she’d been hale and whole and boiling with righteous fury. Now, she has none of that. Her body is barely more than a passing acquaintance, half-deaf to her command. She is a whirlpool, spinning itself out amid the chaos of the rapids. She knows nothing of Thorin, not truly, and even if she did, in this moment she is far from any coherent defense. Thorin _looms_ , his very presence demanding nothing less than complete honesty. “I am no longer of my people.”

“Explain.”

Kili doesn’t know. He looks at her with open-mouthed alarm. “I came on my own.”

“And what does that mean?”

“She saved me,” Kili interjects. “I _told_ you. On the bridge in Mirkwood and again in Lake-town. She came for me on Ravenhill-”

“The bridge where the Elves locked the gate.”

“Yes, but-”

“And where you received an arrow the length of my leg.”

“Yes,” Kili says, and then backtracks, “well, not like that-

“My king forbade me to pass beyond Mirkwood’s border,” Tauriel says sharply. “I disobeyed.” 

Kili opens his mouth but no words come out. Thorin regards her with an unreadable expression, his eyes gray as slate and just as impenetrable. There is a great sense that she stands beneath a great boulder balanced so precariously, so _carefully_ , that one wrong breath will send it tumbling upon her. She would be crushed without the stone noticing it fell. 

“For my part in your aid, I am no longer welcome.” Her heart pounds in her chest, but somehow, her voice stays level. “I made my choice with full knowledge. I accept the consequences.”

“ _No longer welcome?_ ” Kili bursts out, a sound of wild and wounded disbelief, but in that moment, something passes over Thorin’s face.

“You helped my nephew,” the king says, his tone iron-calm. “Do not mistake my gratitude for approval.” Kili squirms with anxiety but Thorin silences him with a glance. “We will speak of this later.”

“Uncle-”

“ _Later_ ,” Thorin says, a fraction more gentle. In that moment, Tauriel sees not a king, but an uncle reeling from loss, prepared to over-react at the slightest threat to his nephews. Despair rises, followed immediately by a fierce determination that she will prove herself - she _has_ to prove herself - worthy. 

She’s an Elf; she cannot face the reality of her odds. 

“Have you come to heal my kin?” Thorin asks her. 

“I have spoken to my lord Legolas-”

“You,” he repeats, and gives a significant look at Fili, motionless in the other bed. “If you have any skill at healing, I would have you use it.”

Kili’s grasp on her arm tightens. 

“I cannot promise a miracle,” Tauriel says hoarsely. “But I will do whatever I can.”

“I already feel better,” Kili chimes in. “In fact, I’m completely fine.” The effect is immediately spoiled by a fit of coughing.

Fierce concern darkens Thorin’s countenance, thick and clotted as old blood. Here is a man unaccustomed to helplessness, one who has now been staring it in the face since the end of the battle and is stretched almost to breaking. If he thought he could drain the healing power from her body himself, she has no doubt she would already be dismembered. 

Tauriel suddenly wants to tell him everything that’s happened to her, how she lost her family to an inferno so much like the one that brought down Erebor, how she had nothing and was nothing until Thranduil took her in. She wants to tell him she knows how much Fili and Kili love each other, and despite his reckless nature, Kili wants only to please and protect those he loves. He has a family, a true family, something she has never had. She loves Legolas and she knows he loves her, but he isn’t blood. She could never be anything more than a foundling, living on the grace of a man she has now irrevocably betrayed. Kili is secure in his people’s affection and it’s made him confident and bold. 

She’s given up everything to get him home. She drew a weapon on her king and shudders now in revulsion at the memory. It was the greatest sin she could have committed short of kinslaying itself. Thorin cannot ever truly understand the magnitude of her treachery. He isn’t an Elf. It just isn’t possible. 

“Whatever I can,” she says, unable to keep her voice from shaking.

There’s a long moment of silence, and then he reaches over to palm the back of Kili’s head. “Rest,” he says to his nephew. “We need you well.”

“Only if Tauriel stays.” At Thorin’s warning look, Kili clenches his jaw. “I mean it, Uncle. You know I do.”

Thorin sighs, and something in Tauriel’s chest comes unclenched. Her judgement has been deferred, at least for now. 

Just then, Oin comes in with a younger Dwarf trailing behind, both laden with bowls and bread.

“Ori!” Kili says, too brightly. “This is Tauriel!”

“Indeed,” Thorin mutters.

The younger Dwarf has stopped in his tracks, mouth agape, and Oin gives him a nudge. “Keep moving, lad.”

“Tauriel,” Ori echoes, his eyes darting from her to Kili and Thorin and back.

“There will be time for introductions all around later,” Oin says peevishly. “Right now, we have wounded to tend. Bowls, lad.”

Kili takes his and obediently slurps at the rim. Oin clears his throat and Tauriel realizes a helping is being held out to her, too. She frowns.

“I’ve seen you eat fish stew,” the healer says. “My arm is getting tired.” When she hesitates, he bounces the bowl a little. “Lass, you can’t turn up after a week and more still looking the warm side of dead and expect me to be idle. Elf or no, a body cannot mend on air alone.”

Stung, she takes the bowl, but as soon as the steam hits her nose, she realizes she’s almost shaking with hunger. The bread is coarse and dark, a variety of musky grain she’s not familiar with. 

“Mushrooms,” Ori says with a bob of his head. “It’s got mushrooms.”

“Don’t tell her,” Kili hisses. “What if Elves don’t eat them?”

“Elves eat mushrooms,” Tauriel says mildly. 

Across the room, Thorin gently supports Fili as Oin adds pillows to prop him upright. When the unconscious prince is settled and a cloth tucked under his chin, Thorin takes the broth and sits down to slowly spoon it into his nephew’s mouth. The rhythm is solemn and practiced: the light prompting of the spoon against lips that barely open, the swallow almost unseen. Oin leaves and returns with a large basin of water and a cloth, which he sets on the floor beside the bed.

“Out,” Thorin says, not turning around. 

Kili immediately flares in defense. “Uncle-”

“Do as I say.” 

Grudgingly, he obeys, and Tauriel and Ori follow him out into the main room. “It’s because you’re here,” he whispers to Tauriel. 

“It is because your brother deserves his privacy,” Thorin snaps, possessed of hearing worthy of an Elf. 

So they tidy the table, rearranging herbs and tinctures to have the bare minimum of room for their food. Kili rekindles the fire and drops into a chair beside her, snaring an empty one to prop up his leg. He waves away Tauriel’s concern with his spoon. “Just sore. That’s all.”

Fury blazes up like pitch catching spark. He’s coughing and limping and hollow-eyed, stirring his food rather than eating it, his face torn almost in half. She’s forsaken her king and abandoned her home for him. She’s here in halls she once believed cursed, with her body broken in ways she cannot even catalog. She has been _so afraid_ for him, first in Lake-town and then at Ravenhill, a wild, inescapable, raging fear far beyond any emotion she has ever felt and now Kili’s light-hearted denials fall like fists, each one leaving her further bruised and bloody. 

It’s beyond tears. It’s beyond _words._

If she doesn’t move, she’s going to scream, so Tauriel shoves herself back from the table and stalks off to the balcony, leaning over the wide stone railing to take several gulping breaths. She expects the air to be stagnant, but there’s a fresh, damp breeze coming up from somewhere in Erebor’s depths. It helps.

Erebor. She’s in _Erebor_. She’s wanted to be here more than she’s wanted to breathe, but now that she’s here, the pain hasn’t lessened. If anything, it’s grown sharper. The tears do start to come then, and with great effort she swallows them back. 

After a few minutes, she hears a familiar stagger-step. She turns and Kili hands her back her bowl. His face is broad with open heartache and naked grief. “I’m sorry,” he says, but she can see that he doesn’t quite understand. 

“I cannot return to Mirkwood,” Tauriel says, her voice shaking. “What I have done is through my own choice and I regret nothing. I ask nothing in return save that you please, _please_ do not condescend.”

He shifts so he’s gazing up at her, his eyes deeply penitent. “Tauriel-”

“Do not deceive me.”

“And if I choose to deceive myself?” he says quietly. “What then?”

He’s scared. He’s as scared as she is. He sees his brother insensate in the next room and he’s doing everything he can to keep a brave front, wielding an easy smile as if it were a sword in the middle of a desperate battle. He has no power here except his own good nature. Once, he’d grinned up at her behind the bars of a cell, but if he grinned at this moment, she knows it would be little more than bared teeth.

Still. Her anger burns. “Do what you will.”

He looks back into the room at Ori, who is studiously examining the fire. “I need Fili to live,” Kili whispers, stopping to cough at the end. When he regains his breath, he turns fearful eyes upwards. “He’s my brother. He cannot die. He _can’t_.” His hand goes to her sleeve, gripping tightly. “What you did for me-”

It’s not the same. She knows a bad head wound when she sees it. No Elf would live as Fili lives now, if living can even be said. Pulling a shadow from Kili’s leg tested the very limits of her skill. She cannot fathom how she would heal something so much more vital, something that seems already gone. 

The world seems to tremble beneath her feet, its unseen tethers doubling their effort to reel her into the stone floor. She will try to save Fili. Anything Kili wants, she will break herself trying to do. She already has.

Finally, Thorin and Oin finish with Fili and come back into the main room. Thorin points a stern finger at Kili. “You. Rest.”

“What about Tau-”

His uncle throws an exasperated huff and leaves without further comment, Ori scuttling out behind him. Oin stays a moment longer, looking them over. “This isn’t what you want to hear, lad,” he says to Kili, “but you cannot shoot an arrow with a loose string.”

“But Fili...Tauriel can-”

“Tauriel cannot.” She’s shocked to hear such a blunt assessment of her own strength, but Oin gives her no chance to defend herself. “Do as your uncle said, lad. I’ll make you more tea for that cough, but then it’s back to bed with you.” He glances at Tauriel. “Both of you.”

Kili protests further, an increasingly-desperate litany of excuses and entreaties right up until Oin hands him the mug. “I don’t need this. Heal _her_ ,” he’s saying. “Then she can heal Fili.”

All joy has disappeared from the room, drawn out like smoke up the chimney. Tauriel finds her body moving on its own, a sleepwalker’s path back to the Dwarf-sized bed. She doesn’t remember lying down until Kili comes to wrap himself around her. 

“Forgive me,” he says into her hair. “I know you’re weary.”

“Tomorrow,” she promises. “I swear to you, I will give it my all.”

His arms tighten. It hurts, but with such fierce passion she cannot begrudge the pain. “You’re here. I cannot believe you’re here. This feels like a dream.”

 _Starlight_. 

She tilts her head toward his and takes his lips in her own, and falls asleep with his breath in her mouth.

* * *

Somewhere in the night, his coughing escalates. He gets up, wanders around for a bit, sits with Fili for a while, and comes back to bed. When his head hits the pillow, the coughing starts again and he’s back up to wandering. 

The third time it happens, Tauriel reaches over to snag his arm as he tucks the blankets back around her. “Kili?”

“It’s nothing,” he says, and when she starts to flare in anger, quickly adds. “I don’t want to keep you awake.” 

“You will not.”

He kisses her forehead as if it’s something he’s always done, a gesture so sweet and perfect it leaves her with no strength to resist. “Sleep, _âmralimê_.”

She does, but fitfully, dreams vague but unquiet. Eventually, though there are no markers of daylight here in the crystal-lit depths of Erebor, her body knows somewhere dawn is breaking. She finds Kili slumped in the chair beside Fili’s bed, a heavy fur around his shoulders, coughing with every other breath. When she goes to touch him, his skin burns. 

Fear surges up in her throat. 

“Go back to sleep,” he mumbles, and then musters a lopsided grin. “You are the best dream.”

She immediately goes to the table in the main room, digging through the sundry supplies heaped upon it, sniffing unlabeled ingredients as she searches. A small leather pouch holds a few leftover flakes of willowbark. It’s not nearly enough, but it’s better than nothing so she finds a bowl, wipes the dried poultice from it with a bandage, and casts the willowbark at the bottom. The hearth was banked well and welcomes a new log with eager heat. 

When she’s set the kettle to boil with a fervent wish for speed, she goes back to the table. A handful of yarrow is discovered, along with a clove of garlic, barely bigger than a fingernail. Tauriel isn’t an herbalist - far from it - but these she knows, so she turns the flat side of a knife to the garlic, adding it and the shredded yarrow to the bowl. 

The leftover mug from last night’s tea sits on the mantel. She sniffs and takes a cautious taste, trying to identify its ingredients. She catches layers of mint covering a bitterness that might be the willowbark. The only mint she finds among the pharmacopoeia is a single stalk of catnip, but into the bowl it goes. 

When the concoction has brewed, it smells appalling, which aligns with her understanding of such things. Kili concurs, coughing at the taste. “This is terrible,” he says. 

“Drink,” she says, more severely than she intends, because she just found him, she _just found him_ , and every moment is another opportunity for him to be lost.

Is this what her life will be, these few precious centuries, leaping from crisis to crisis with barely a breath between? 

“You worry too much,” Kili says fondly, and coughs. 

_Does_ she? An Elf may fall to poison or violence, but disease cannot take hold. Her entire experience with illness has been encompassed in his solid body. The morgul poison was a thing outside the natural progression of life. His kin aren’t panicking. Perhaps this is less than she fears? Perhaps this is how it’s been and the fever was overcome only briefly by the joy of her arrival.

Tauriel cannot take that chance. Her steps feel steadier than the day before, so she ventures into the endless hallways for someone she knows. She finds Bofur, stretched out on a balustrade and smoking his pipe over a plate of breakfast leftovers. “Shire food spoiled me, but this isn’t so bad,” he says cheerfully, and holds out the plate. “Sausage?”

“Kili is sick,” she says. 

“Aye,” he says, languidly exhaling a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke. “So I’ve heard. Glad you’re here though. That’ll do the lad some good. He’s been a bit of a pest, if you ask me-”

“Where is Oin?”

“Let the man sleep. Bifur kept him up half the night with his whinging.”

Tauriel closes her eyes and forces a deep breath. “Thorin.” He will think she failed. She promised to heal his nephews. Instead, Kili has collapsed in on himself and all she could do was throw an ugly mixture of herbs at him. She wants to be overreacting, but she’s strung too tightly, unable to relax. If she closes her eyes, she sees the glint of gold against blowing snow, determination born of desperation filling her throat. “I must find Thorin.”

Bofur’s entire demeanor changes. “It’s as bad as all that?”

“I cannot say.” It hurts to admit that, especially when they all seem to think she has some kind of mystical power intrinsic to her Elven blood. She is no great healer; all she has is a desperation born of fear and love.

“Right. Er, what do you need? More of that...weed?”

Relief crashes in. “Yes.”

He considers his plate for a moment too long, and then gets up. “I’ll go wake Oin. He’ll be a right bastard for it, but needs must, eh?”

Tauriel may not be welcome in these halls, but she is no stranger and the gratitude she feels is beyond words.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has gotten so much more traction than I expected. You're all lovely and amazing and I am incredibly grateful to share this will you.
> 
> And speaking of grateful, in celebration of a certain inauguration, have a little hope.

There is no athelas. Knowing only its mundane properties, Oin had issued orders to find some after the battle, but the land between Erebor and Dale has been battle-trodden to bare mud. It’s a small plant, low-lying and growing in rare little patches. It is easy to miss and Tauriel would herself go and make a second search, except the worst has come to pass in the mountain halls.

Fili is beginning to die. 

It’s been eleven days since the battle and he hasn’t woken. Mere hours after Kili takes back to his sickbed, something inside Fili starts to fail. It’s a small thing, like the shifting of soil at the passage of a worm, but when Tauriel feels it, her heart stops in her chest. 

Kili is choking on himself, but if he lives and Fili dies, he will never recover. 

She settles herself by Fili’s bed, putting one hand on his chest, sinking into the emptiness beneath his skin. She has nothing - no athelas, no herbs, nothing save whatever power she can dredge up inside herself. 

She was able to pull Kili back by gripping the poison and forcefully wrenching it from his body. Inside Fili, there is nothing to grab, nothing for her magic to take hold. It feels like trying to capture handfuls of mist. The only thing she can do is sink herself inside his chest, envisioning vines that sway in the wind in place of natural breath. His blood becomes a sweetly flowing brook. His body is an empty room and if she cannot bring back what it once held, she can at least keep the door from making that final, terrible swing on its hinge. If she cannot bring him back to himself, she can at least fill him with things that might.

Tauriel takes all of Mirkwood, its paths and waterways, the steadiness of its roots and protection of its boughs, all that is green and good, and pours it into Fili. She brings him the spring rain and summer breeze, the first pale blossoms and the last ochre leaves, the bumbling industry of the bees, the delicate whimsy of dragonflies as they skim above silver-bright trout. She floods him with sugary pollen lifted from upturned flowers, the dense musk of rich earth, the clean, lingering scent of lightning. 

Fili isn’t of Mirkwood. He’s a child of the mountains. Tauriel focuses on sunset-colored lichens that cling to sunny boulders, hardy mosses that tuck themselves in damp shadow, the stately pines wearing mantles of thick red bark. She pulls in the breathless rise of cliffs, the strength of a gentle slope, the majesty of rain-split crags and weatherworn peaks. She pictures peaceful marmots, delighting in the forthright little sprouts that cling to a spray of scree. Snow, bright as the sun, a dazzling field of crystals stretching out in a wide, glacial plane. Beneath the sky, caves dive like arteries and veins, damp and cool. Metals gleam, the sun and the moon and countless stars hidden in cocoons of stone.

She can’t know how long she holds him. There is no athelas to focus her energy and she is neither talented nor practiced enough to do anything more than drench him with the chaos of all she loves.

* * *

With a start, Tauriel becomes aware of cool hands gently taking her place. For a series of terrified breaths, she thinks she’s failed, until she looks up into familiar brown eyes in a broad Elven face. “... _Aecthel_?”

“You have held him fast,” the healer says gently. “We come to bring him back.”

It makes no sense. She cannot trust her eyes. Aecthel is a friend, but she lives in Mirkwood, in healing halls that Tauriel can no longer visit. This must be some sort of fever-dream. She puts her hands back against Fili’s chest but the magic curdles in her palms, useless. 

“Come, pass your burden to me,” says dream-Aecthel. 

Tauriel promised Thorin. She _promised-_

A touch like the lightest falling leaf lands upon the space between her shoulderblades and at once, calm surges through her. It feels like the first calm she’s ever felt, the first peace, an endless spray of pure, unsullied starlight, a breath after a lifetime of suffocation. “ _Mellon_ , you have given much. Now is the time for you to rest.”

Tauriel means to respond, but then the scent of athelas rises up, clean and fresh, and she knows that they are all of them saved.

Everything becomes a blur. Someone is singing softly, a healing chant. She drinks broth she barely tastes, the spreading peace of the athelas drawing her in like a silver stream. “Kili?” she tries.

“He lives,” Aecthel assures her. “Sleep. Your efforts have not gone in vain.”

* * *

Tauriel wakes to the sound of rattling dice. 

Fili and Kili are settled into deep chairs nearby, a small table and dicing tray set between them. They’re both wrapped in furs, but Kili’s has slipped off one shoulder as he eagerly leans forward to count. “Ha!” he crows. “That’s four in a row.”

Fili frowns in consternation. “That one landed-”

“Perfectly,” Kili says smugly. “It landed perfectly.”

“I’m injured,” his brother retorts. “You aren’t playing fair.”

“Mother dropped you on your head a hundred times. Once more should hardly matter.”

“ _You_ got a little water up your nose-”

“And stabbed! I got stabbed.”

“Everyone got stabbed.”

“Mine was worse.”

“You’re too delicate.”

A wave of affection washes over her. She loves them. She loves them _both_ so much. They’re _alive_ and bickering affably. She could never take Kili away from his kin.

“You’re awake!” Kili exclaims, and scrambles to sit - pounce, really - on the edge of the bed. He immediately takes up her hands, but Tauriel needs more than that and then he’s in her arms the way he always should have been. There’s no weakness in his body, nothing clouding his lungs, no malevolence building like a storm.

For a long moment, she just presses her face into his hair, inhaling herbs and clean skin. He’s alive. 

_Starlight_. 

“You snore,” Fili observes pointedly. 

Kili whips his head around to give his brother a scandalized look. “She does _not_ ”

“And you would know how?”

He opens his mouth and then closes it again, his face falling instead into a dramatic glare. 

“You live,” Tauriel breathes, pulling away from Kili just enough to survey his brother. “You are well?”

He nods gravely. There are hollows in his cheeks where there should be rosy humor, but amid the bruises of convalescence, his eyes are clear. “You have a talent for saving the sons of Durin.”

“I did nothing.”

“You did too!” Kili’s hands go tight on her own. “You sat-”

“I am no healer-”

“Yet here I am,” Fili says. “And my brother too. Accept those as facts.”

She looks over them both. Fili’s nose is twisted slightly, his face a gruesome mottle of purple and green. Kili’s scar is less raw, the stitches gone but their shadows still stretching pink and bright across the ragged canyon of skin. There’s a darkness about both brothers, a bitter strength. They are still so young, but in a handspan of days, their innocence has been brutally stripped away.

They are healing, she tells herself. Dwarves are known to be resilient. They will all become whole again.

There’s a long stretch of silence, Fili regarding her gravely and Kili clinging to her arm as if his entire being depended on it. Finally, Fili says, “Well. Would you like to play some dice?”

* * *

What follows is an awkward game that no one is truly concentrating on. Kili is more absorbed in holding onto Tauriel and Fili seems to be having great difficulty reading the runes etched into the pale bone. The dice get gathered and tossed, but more out of ritual than any actual accounting. Shortly, a hearty meal arrives courtesy of Oin, Ori and Bofur, although the latter is carrying nothing and appears to be there solely for his own amusement. 

By their reckoning, Tauriel has been asleep for three days. Fili woke yesterday. The delegation of healers from Mirkwood came, dispensed their healing magic and returned home like a fresh breeze efficiently dispersing clouded smoke. 

“How?” she asks. She cannot imagine Thranduil yielding to Legolas’s requests so easily. 

“That would be Bilbo,” Bofur says, crossing his arms and leaning easily against the wall. “I believe his exact words were ‘give them back their bloody jewels’. Strange how well that worked.”

“ _What??_ ” Kili launches to his feet with a vehemence that startles everyone. “That’s all it took? He should have done that _immediately!_ _Two weeks_ -”

“Brother, I’m here,” Fili interjects gently, putting a hand on Kili’s arm. Almost reflexively, Kili grasps his brother’s wrist as if afraid Fili will fall away. “What is done is done.”

This is not the boy with the dashing grin, the bloom of sweet connection at an admittedly terrible joke. This is starlight at its most harsh, cold and cutting in a bitter night. This is rage, sudden and incandescent as dragonfire. 

“Lad,” Oin says, “I’m sure-”

“That’s all it took,” Kili repeats, his voice full of dangerous wonderment. “Just give back the jewels and they heal us. That’s it.”

Fili turns to his brother. “Kili-”

“I thought Tauriel brought the healers,” Kili goes on, and looks at her with dawning recognition. “But you _couldn’t_.”

“Legolas talked with the king,” she tries. 

“It was definitely the jewels,” Bofur says blithely. “Quite a scene, really.”

The noise that tears itself from Kili is thick with equal parts fury and pain. “Once again he sides with greed over his own kin,” he spits, and is on the edge of storming out of the room when Fili grabs again at his sleeve.

“Kili. Stay.” It’s Fili’s words, but the voice saying them carries the weight of the line of Durin, absolute authority carved in blood and stone. 

Tauriel thinks of her anger at Thranduil, of the madness that overtook her limbs and made her draw her bow against her king. _You think this is love?_

Love. She did not know love, not truly, until Kili came like a bolt of lightning from an empty sky, rending all she knew of comfort as if it were no more than a rotted tree. What she thought was love was nothing more than pale affection. Love is greedy, desperate. It is terrifying and deep. Elves have millennia to languidly explore their love; for mortals it must be distilled down to its sharp, acrid essence, meant to be ravenously consumed.

There is so much conflict in love. Kili is ready to turn on his uncle like a wounded boar to protect his brother, an instinct so deep and fierce it eclipses all reason. He whines a little, the agony of impotent action, an arrow nocked with no target. Fili pulls him down, mouth level with Kili’s ear, and whatever is said between them serves to regain some small peace. 

When Kili straightens, his eyes gleam with tears. He casts a dark, pleading look to Tauriel as if she can somehow help him, but they both know she is wholly dependent on the grudging tolerance of her hosts.

A silent meal strengthens them all. Fili gets up and makes a slow, halting circuit of the room before collapsing back into his chair, panting as heavily as if he’d just sprinted from Dale. Kili hovers, orbiting like an anxious bee. 

“He needs rest,” Oin says. “And you, lad - it would do you good to take a walk as well.”

“I’m _fine-_ ” 

“Down the hall and back,” Oin insists. “Just to stretch your legs.”

Kili growls like a warg. “I’m staying here.”

“Kee,” Fili says in between breaths, “I’m not going anywhere.” 

“Neither am I.”

There’s no point to arguing. Kili reclaims his chair and glares until the others finally leave. Fili falls asleep almost immediately, his chin drooping to his chest. For lack of anything better to do, Tauriel finds his fur and tucks it about his shoulders. She vaguely recalls seeing a whetstone in the chaos of the main room and after a few minutes’ search, she comes back to sit on the floor beside the bed and lose herself in the steady cadence of sharpening her daggers.

“Is that all you brought?” Kili asks quietly.

She wants to say she needs nothing else, but the absence of her bow feels like an amputated limb - justly amputated, the excision of a deadly tool - and she has only the clothes she wears. “It will suffice,” she says instead.

“Did they really throw you out?”

“I chose to leave.”

“But you can’t go back. You said you can’t go back.”

“I am no longer welcome.”

“Because you left.”

“It is so.”

He frowns. “Tauriel...was that before or after you came for me in Lake-town?”

She pauses. “I knew there would be consequences. I do not regret my decision.”

“You have to stay here,” he says decisively. “Whatever you need, I’ll make sure you have it. You have only to ask.” He looks down at her, suddenly fearful. “Unless there’s some other place…”

“I do not think your uncle will approve.” Her fingers tighten around the whetstone. She cannot keep her voice from shaking. 

“Approve?” Kili spits, the dark fury rising back into his eyes, and then he’s down on the floor beside her, placing aside the whetstone and her daggers and taking her hands into his own with a grip that borders on pain. “I don’t _care_ what he approves. Two _weeks_ -” His teeth snap together with an audible click. 

She says nothing. 

“I want Mother,” Kili finally whispers. Blooded veteran, reckless youth and wounded child - so many people existing in a single body. “She’d straighten him out. She always does. Uncle said he sent a raven, but it’ll be months before she’s here.”

“From where does she come?”

“The Blue Mountains,” he says, and then casts her a sly glance. “Ered Luin. See, I know some Elvish.”

“Sindarin,” she corrects with a smile. “There are many languages that could be called Elvish.”

“Will you teach me some?”

She will if he asks, but he’s so Dwarven, so pure, so untainted by any self-righteousness of either of their forebears that she wants to keep away anything Elvish for as long as she can. He’s _curious_ , a kindred spirit, full of youthful enthusiasm and a burning need to know everything about his world. 

She felt like that once and then she fell, his tears freezing in her hair in the chill air above Ravenhill. She could be like that again, she knows she could, but in this moment, she’s still too shaky and painfully aware of everything she has to lose. 

Kili will save her from herself. He came into her life like an upended table, warm eyes and an easy grin, confident and more than a little cocky. She fell in love like falling off a cliff, an action unavoidable and terrifying.

She has no regrets. He’s tucked against her shoulder, his hands warm in her own, the smell of him filling her mouth. The rest of her world is ransomed for this moment and the reality is blistering.

After a moment, he says, “Your family. Surely they will miss you?”

They know so little of each other. A few whispered conversations as prisoner and guard, a bare handful more separated by a veil of fever. 

“No,” she finally says, because if she considers bearing the weight of the full truth, she can feel herself suffocating. Friends, yes, Legolas, of course, but she’s still young and has spent most of her time in Mirkwood chasing spiders or hunting alone. There is - there _was_ \- camaraderie among the guard. She was fond of her soldiers and felt secure in their respect for her, but…

She came into Thranduil’s care a shattered child, wrecked by grief and fire. She doesn’t remember the moment she decided Legolas was safe. There were others - healers, nurses and well-meaning caregivers - but perhaps it was Legolas’s easy humor that finally broke through her silence. He never sat her down to meditate or asked her to reflect on what had happened. Instead, he put a bow in her hands and told her to aim.

He seemed to find her amusing, rather than tragic. He teased her gently and somehow always had some kind of pocketed sweet. He claimed to need companionship on various errands and patrols, and it wasn’t until well into her third century that she realized how careful and deliberate it had all been.

Perhaps it was because he, too, knew the agony of a lost parent. Perhaps he had needed affection himself in the absence of any from his father. Legolas is the closest thing to family she had.

Until Kili. 

Somehow, he sees what she doesn’t say. “I don’t remember my father,” he says, jumping a little too quickly into the silence. “He fell in battle when I was barely thirty. Orcs. Thorin says he took a dozen of them with him. Mother says Fili looks most like him.”

Tauriel glances over at the sleeping prince. A snore rips itself from his throat, but after shifting slightly, he doesn’t wake. Kili has Thorin’s chestnut hair and swarthy complexion. She can imagine a dark-eyed mother and a golden father, their two young sons kept safe in the circle of their arms. 

“I had another uncle, too,” Kili goes on. “Frerin - Mother and Thorin’s brother. He was slain in the Battle of Azanulbizar before we were born. He-”

“Please,” Tauriel says, because her lungs are already filling with dread. “I do not wish to speak of battle.”

“No.” His hands squeeze hers. “I don’t know why I said all of that. I don’t want to, either.”

Here they are, Tauriel and Kili, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the floor of an apartment in Erebor that neither has left in days. The room is quiet but somehow not oppressive. The only sound comes from their breaths and Fili’s snoring. 

She hadn’t thought beyond this moment. She’s been so focused on finding Kili that any future was nebulous and distant, a thing she couldn’t let her heart envision. It’s come in brief moments - an urgent wonder what it would be like to press her body against his - but the practical aspects have not been considered. 

There are centuries ahead of them, but only if they are not kept apart, and the prospect of him being taken away after she’s just found him sits like a boulder on her chest. 

She can’t think of anything else to do. To calm herself, she hums the first few lines of Beren and Luthién.

“What is that?” he asks.

Tauriel isn’t a storyteller. She lacks the florid style and gentle patience that makes for a good tale, but her voice is clear and she knows the words by heart. It hurts, this song about an Elven maiden and her mortal lover, but it feels somehow less painful to lean in than it would to play at denial, “It’s a love story.”

“It’s pretty,” he says, and tucks himself deeper into her shoulder.

Later, he will sing to her himself, a ballad of his ancestor’s first awakening. She can’t quite make out the melody, but what he lacks in tone, he makes up for in sheer enthusiasm. It’s still breathtaking, a great sweep of words like the soaring pillars of Erebor. Elven songs are light and precious, ephemeral things like spidersilk on the wind. This is solid, triumphant, an unselfconscious celebration of a forebear’s mighty strength. 

Then there comes a verse: 

_He stooped and looked in Mirrormere,_

_And saw a crown of stars appear,_

_As gems upon a silver thread,_

_Above the shadows of his head_

“Starlight,” she breathes, not intending to speak, but Durin was a _Dwarf_ and was crowned by _stars_ , in the same way that the first light beheld by the Eldar came from the glittering spray of white amid the endless black. 

Kili looks up at her, his face glowing like the moon, like he’s just realized something overwhelmingly rare and beautiful.

It’s the same look he gave her on the shores of the lake, a heady combination of wonder and worship. She takes him in her arms, pulling his head against her chest. 

_Gilith_.


	5. Chapter 5

Fili must have made Kili promise not to mention the gems, because he very pointedly doesn’t, but even Fili cannot control his brother’s anger. Word comes that their mother, the princess Dis, will arrive in spring alongside however many of her people choose to follow. The Blue Mountains have been their home for a generation, and Balin counsels that many Dwarves may not choose to return to a place so filled with painful memory. 

“They will come,” Thorin says decisively. “This is their birthright. None among us would squander it.”

Tauriel stands as far away and as unobtrusive as she can and yet still satisfy Kili, who has barely let her out of his sight. Thranduil had once told her the same thing, that Mirkwood was the birthright of the Elves, but she has forsaken it to be by the man she loves. She understands where Thorin refuses.

Which isn’t to say she loves Erebor. She’s a child of the sunlight, tucked away in the unwavering bulk of a mountain. The halls may rise to unseen heights, glowing crystals pricking the darkness like stars, but somewhere above there is still impenetrable stone. The air whistles among the columns, but it’s not the free-flowing breeze rustling through silver leaves. Water flows and gurgles through a knitted network of pipes, but it’s a poor excuse for a forest stream. If she considers it too deeply, it’s suffocating.

Everything feels very tenuous. Tauriel isn’t welcome here. If Kili were not a prince, if he were the heir instead of Fili, or if he were less fierce or less loved, she would have been summarily thrown out. 

“She stays,” he’s growled a dozen times, seeming to swell up to twice his size, channeling the same authority that Thorin carries as easily as a cloak. She hates being dependent, but she’s here and he’s here, and they’re here together, and everything else is worth bearing.

Stll. Tauriel isn’t one to sit still. She prefers action - _needs_ action - and nothing in her being is capable of being a monolith of proper Elven detachment. After one too many snide remarks from the emigrants from the Iron Hills, the wish for violence must show in her face because Kili spins her around and all but drags her to a secluded balcony overlooking the main gate. 

“I cannot stay,” she confesses a few days after her arrival, the words hot and thick in her mouth. “My presence is a hindrance to the recovery of this place. I have no place here. I damage you-”

“No no no,” he says, taking her hands in his own broad grasp. “ _Amrâlimê_. You could never damage me. You bring me _joy_.”

“The others-”

He makes a small noise of distress. “I’m neglecting you. I’m sorry, I-”

“Your uncle is king. You have a duty to attend to him. I have no part in the royal court, nor should I.”

“Tauriel-”

“You know I speak truth,” she says quietly, although her heart is being ground to pieces in her chest like last year’s brittle kernels. “Your people have suffered much. I remind them of their hardship. They are right to resent me.”

“They are _not_ right,” he growls. “How are we to have peace with our neighbors if we do as we did and wall ourselves off? You fought by our side. If anyone has a right to be here, it’s you.”

It feels like a thin argument. Tauriel has not come here as an emissary. She has no tongue for conciliatory words and no patience for the intricacies of statecraft. She’s a soldier, a weapon. She reeks of it. 

“ _Amrâlimê_ ,” he says, tilting her chin down to look into her eyes. “You’ve saved me in so many ways and I almost lost you. Let it be my turn to provide cover.”

Kili is so earnest, his face so eager and beautiful. He means everything he says and says it with such strength and conviction she cannot help but believe him. 

* * *

They are _finally_ given a task. 

Assessors have returned from the lower parts of the mines to report an infestation of goblins. “The fell creatures have nae ventured up but ‘tis only a matter of time,” rumbles one of the Iron Hills engineers. “Best clear them out now.”

“I will do it,” Kili interjects quickly. “Uncle, give me a small party. It can be easily done.”

“Do it.” Thorin turns to spear Tauriel with a sharp glance. “You will go as well.”

It has been almost a week since she and the brothers left their sickbeds and she’s absolutely itching for a fight. This is the greatest gift she could have been given and she thrills to the challenge. 

She’s missing armor, though, and her only weapons are her knives. When she woke in Dale, Legolas made sure she had sturdy travel clothes and for that, she is grateful. Anything more was lost in the chaos of Ravenhill. 

“I have a present for you,” Kili says, his eyes glittering. 

Cocking her head, she follows him to the Dwarven armory. There, on a mannequin, is a set of Elven leathers, rough but patched and cleaned. This is the armor of an archer, light and sturdy. 

Someone died in this armor. 

Tauriel turns away, nauseous, and it must show in her face because Kili immediately grips her arms. “They have no more use for it,” he says urgently. “If you don’t want it, that’s fine, but its maker wouldn’t want it to go to waste, would they?”

She wonders if she knew the Elf who made this. She _knows_ she knew the one who wore it. Thranduil’s army is vast in her eyes, but not so vast that in her centuries with the Guard, she hasn’t come to know the archers as she trained alongside them. There is no doubt she knew this person’s face and name, perhaps even their favored arrow and the type of wine they liked best after a day at the training ground. Wearing this armor should be an act of honoring all those who wore it before, but she is outcast. It feels wrong to even consider.

“Tauriel,” Kili prompts gently. “Whatever they told you, you’re still an Elf.”

So she relents, and the moment the breastplate lies against her chest she knows it’s perfect. It’s stiffer than her own well-loved piece, but that is long gone, lost on Ravenhill, and it feels appropriate that this will chafe until it learns her body. She _can_ tighten the straps and she _can_ fasten the buckles, but Kili offers his own strong, stout fingers and with a shiver, she lets him.

They have been so chaste. Thorin tolerates her presence but he has very pointedly contrived ways to distance her from his nephew. The rooms she’s been given are comfortable enough, but the door opens into a hallway busy with construction traffic. In that part of Erebor, apartments soar thick and solid, the first flush of life coming into them with glowing windows like a hundred warm stars. There are no secret passageways, no hidden routes. She is an Elf among Dwarves in the city of their dreams; any skill she has for stealth is utterly useless. 

If she wants to see Kili, she has to traverse into the very heart of the royal palace, taking its tall, solid walkways into areas that have become bustling hubs of Dwarven activity. She cannot slip away to lie in the warm circle of his arms the way she did the night of her arrival without being speared with a dozen or more suspicious Dwarven glares. She may have approval to be here, but that doesn’t mean her presence is _approved_ , and she carries the weight of that indictment like chains. 

She came to kiss him. She came to him with her heart in her hands, thumping and bleeding, to place in his chest and now she must content herself to stand at a respectful distance. This is the path she’s chosen. He is alive and within her sight and that has to be enough.

And yet. 

In the quiet of the armory, the solitude suddenly becomes a physical presence. They reach for each other at the same moment despite armor, despite Thorin, despite all of Erebor, and when they kiss, all the world melts away.

It lasts only a breath. Booted footsteps come to the next room and when one of the armorers rounds the corner with an armful of shining mail, he finds nothing but two warriors checking their own supplies, each as distant as the moon. 

* * *

Among the many sins of the Dwarves as chronicled by Thranduil, their greed drove them too deeply into the earth. Prone to effusion more than embellishment, the Elvenking’s stories always left Tauriel with a strange sense of foreboding, of things made raw and naked, never meant to be exposed. 

Like the soaring pillars of Erebor’s grand entrance, the sheer _scale_ of the main mineshaft leaves her struck dumb. She’s expected dense warrens, tunnels just large enough to accommodate a single miner. What she finds is an endless cavern, as if the bedrock itself yawned open to expose its treasure. Some work has already begun, lanterns like stars hanging in strings down into the endless black. 

Stars, reflected in Mirrormere. When they cannot see the natural sky, the Dwarves create their own. She glances at Kili, her _gilith_ , and finds his beloved face broad with wonder. 

“I’ve heard stories,” he breathes, eyes shining, and in that moment looks so much like the mother’s reckless son he was on the day they’d met that her heart clenches fiercely. 

This place is his birthright. He is a prince and this place flows in his blood like the veins of gold trailing down the rough-hewn walls. 

Who is she to claim even a small part of him, an Elf dizzied by this impossible scale?

The way down starts as a substantial boulevard, lined on all sides with baskets to be filled with ore and hoisted up to the smelters. They’ve brought a small contingent of Iron Hills Dwarves with them, and as they descend, Kili directs them to smaller tunnels, branching away from the main shaft into the stone. It is a tree, worked in absence: the shaft is the trunk, limbs of empty air twisting away to follow mineral whims. It becomes less oppressive if she thinks of it like that. 

The boulevard narrows into a path, then to what is little more than a ledge barely wide enough for a single person. A fortnight ago, Tauriel doubted her ability to walk unaided and now, she relishes the chance to nimbly move along the uneven surface. This is not the dappled sunlight of Mirkwood, but it steadies her nonetheless. 

At length, Kili hefts a decent chunk of stone and sends it noisily tumbling into the abyss. It takes a few heartbeats, but then a shriek floats up, and another, and another, and the goblins have been found. 

The last of the Iron Hills Dwarves break off into a nearby tunnel at Kili’s signal and he turns to her with a wide, feral grin. “Shall we?”

She raises an eyebrow. “You find the need to ask?”

“ _Amrâlimê,_ ” he says, the word soft and husky, and together they raise their bows. 

* * *

It takes little time for the first pack of goblins to swarm up the shaft. The fight that begins is _glorious_.

He alternates between his bow and his sword and she alternates between her bow and her blades. As she takes the head off the nearest goblin, she wonders at how easily they complement each other. He’s fought with Fili, and she remembers the truly impressive number of knives her scouts pulled from him. Kili is used to someone with blades at his back, and she’s used to Legolas at hers, and the transition is natural and easy.

“I bet I can slay more than you,” he says over the clash of metal, grinning widely as he whirls to bisect a goblin.

“An unwise contest,” she observes, and casually tosses a blade into another’s eye, snatching it back as the creature falls forward at her feet.

“Oh, is it?”

“I would not wish to damage your confidence.”

“I’m up to seven already.”

“Only seven?”

In a split second, he darts up a nearby rock and pulls her in for a swift, deep kiss. Before she can react, he’s leaping down to drop-kick a goblin and stab it through the chest as it squirms on the ground. "Don’t just stand there,” he laughs. “I’ll win for sure.”

“That was _cheating_.” Her lips tingle, suddenly naked and chilled without his heat, and she’s so distracted she almost swipes at empty air.

He winks. “Did it work?”

“Masterfully.” She can’t resist a smile. She can’t resist _him_ , her weakest point and greatest strength. If she lets herself hope, if she can somehow prove to Thorin her worth and he somehow relents, she will take Kili in her arms and kiss him and be kissed until she knows nothing else.

All too soon, the goblins are dispatched. Her blood thrums with the fight, her body thrilling to the dance she loves best. She is unfettered by injury, untrammelled by anxiety, Kili is by her side, _Kili is by her side_ , they are neither of them dead and in this moment, Tauriel’s heart is full and whole.

She turns to continue down into the main mine shaft and then realizes Kili isn’t following her. He stands instead amid a pile of goblin bodies, his eyes trained on her and his face alight with wonder. “It seems so impossible that you’re here,” he breathes. “I thought I dreamed you and then I saw you fallen-” He makes a small noise, pain too great to escape, and she crosses the distance to fold him up in her arms. 

He smells of sweat, heady above the sour pall of goblin blood. She presses her face into his shaggy hair, the ability to touch him warm and alive overwhelming all else. There is no one to tear them apart. There is no Thorin to disapprove, no Thranduil to sneer and send her away. “Come,” she says. “There are goblins yet to kill, and I will not have you best me.”

He grins. “Bold words.”

“Prove me wrong.”

But no sooner do they approach the next tunnel when the sudden crack like lightning echoes through the air and they both jerk their gaze upward just as a great cascade of fallen stone starts its fall directly toward them. Tauriel grabs Kili by the collar, intending to drag him into the safety of the tunnel mouth, but a fierce and terrible determination flares in his eyes and he thrusts a sharp palm to her sternum, hard enough to knock her backward.

Half a breath later, a huge boulder slams into the path, shearing off huge pieces of the mineshaft side as it falls. With Elven reflex that is still almost too slow, Tauriel throws herself into the side tunnel just as the rest of the avalanche crushes the ground that had been beneath her feet. All light disappears. 

When the roaring in her ears becomes only the pound of her own heartbeat, she opens her eyes and slowly uncurls from her trembling crouch. Elves see well in the dark, but this is blackness, so deep and disorienting that it feels like light is only a half-remembered dream. She puts her hands to her face to steady herself. “Kili?”

The silence is deafening. 

“Kili?” Panic swells in her chest. This is the day on Ravenhill, the icy wind scouring the voice from her mouth. This is the desperate rush to find him before the poison took hold, and then to wrench the poison from his body to claim him as her own. “Kili!”

Kili isn’t dead. He isn’t crushed beneath stone. He was just in her arms, the smell of him still lingers in her nostrils, he’s so quick and clever, he _cannot-_

Tauriel was a soldier. She was captain of the guard. She has faced spiders and Orcs without flinching. She gave herself with no hesitation so Kili could live. She is a child of the forest, of trees dense and green beneath the wide, star-strewn sky. She who loves the spring breeze and the flow of streams like liquid silver is now enclosed in darkness, encased in stone with dust in her lungs and the rising terror of a trapped child hot in her throat.

She is so shaken that she’s suddenly forty, calling and calling for someone with no response, and the cry that tears itself from her body cannot stop and cannot be swallowed back. 

It’s a very long time before cognition slowly returns. When she recovers numbers, she starts a slow count of her breaths as she was once taught to do. She must have hope. She is alive. So is he. These are facts. They must be. 

Tauriel has no direction. She doesn’t know where the tunnel entrance is. She has no light, her lantern lost in the leap to safety, and none of the usual ways to navigate. She checks herself, finding her bow miraculously intact and her knives ready in their sheaths. 

She walks until her outstretched hand meets smooth stone: a wall, tool-carved and undamaged. Spinning carefully on her heel, she walks in the opposite direction, her hand finding an identical surface. 

These are the walls. At either ends are the main shaft entrance and what can only be further down into the vein. Her usually keen sense of direction is bewildered both by the darkness and the quiver of waning shock, so she makes an arbitrary choice, walking now with one hand outstretched and the other trailing against the mine wall. The crunch of gravel announces the cave-in before she feels it. 

This has to be the entrance. It _has_ to be something easily cleared away, and not a dead end. Not a tomb. She starts to dig.

There is nothing to mark the passage of time here in the dark, and her hands are raw when she’s forced to admit there are stones she cannot move. She tries shouting again, kicking, peering in every crevice, hoping to see even a glimmer of light, but there isn’t any light, and the only sound is her own voice echoed back. 

Kili. _Gilith_. 

She cannot panic. She cannot sit here like a beast in a net waiting for a rescue that might never come. She is smart and resourceful and she will prevail. She must.

Again, the turn on her heel and the walk down the tunnel with one hand on the wall, the other searching blindly ahead. The air tastes stale and metallic, the stone around her smothering any sensation of direction. Eventually her fingers hit another wall, a sharp, angled turn in the tunnel in a direction that her feet tell her has a very slight upward incline up. 

Does she dare?

She goes a few more steps when she steps on something different, a thin edge set in the stone. Bending to investigate, the edge becomes cool metal and her heart leaps. 

A rail. And there, if she reaches out, a parallel second. 

She’s found a track for mining carts. 

Without hesitation, she follows the incline, the tracks certain underfoot. Eventually, the incline levels out and after some searching, Tauriel finds the tunnel branches off in two directions - the one she’s been following, the one with the rails, and a second, seemingly perpendicular tunnel. Another one to the main shaft?

Hand on the wall and another out in front, she cautiously makes her way down the latter. It seems promising, and she counts her breaths in time with the echo of her footfalls. This tunnel twists and turns, perhaps following a particular vein of ore she cannot see. The longer it goes, the more hope flares in her chest. Surely it connects to the main shaft. It must. She tries to hold her memory of her and Kili’s descent, but the blackness around her makes it shift and warp. 

After an indeterminate time - minutes or hours, time is lost to her - her outstretched hand meets stone. This cannot be the end. _It cannot_. The rails-

But the more she feels, the further out her fingers seek, the stone in front of her becomes a wall, precisely carved and without all doubt a dead end.

All this time, wasted. 

Perhaps she should feel gratitude that she investigated, and not pass by to wonder. Perhaps she should take a moment to meditate, to calm the howling storm inside her, to breathe through the frustration and fear, to focus her mind and continue on. 

Tauriel does none of these things. She slumps to her knees, head resting on the malevolent wall, and allows herself the brief luxury of tears.

* * *

She has another choice to make, back at the intersection with the rails. Kili is out there. He’s looking for her. Of course he is. He is whole and uninjured, he leapt out of the way, he’s sturdy and earnest-

 _Gilith_. 

Starlight. He is her starlight. She ransomed her entire being to come to him and she would ransom herself all over again for one pinprick of his light, one tiny point of everything good and bright in this overwhelming black. 

Perhaps there was something in the cave-in that she missed. Perhaps the others are trying to clear the rubble.

But up the rail shaft, she sees a flicker of orange, a shudder in the darkness that can only be a flame. With a wild surge of hope, she starts for it, walking as quickly as she dares, fingertips ghosting along the wall and the rails certain beneath her feet. “Kili?” Then, because the company of their fellows have split up: “Glath? Molin?”

When the chittering comes bouncing back to her, she realizes she’s made an incredibly foolish mistake, almost comical in its folly. There are still goblins in these tunnels and it suddenly matters not where this particular tunnel leads. The only thing that matters is that she is alone and all but stone-blind, and she has just given up all chance of stealth. 

Goblins. Tauriel can handle goblins. She has fought full-grown Orcs and done well for herself. She has her knives and her bow, and a quiver that somehow survived the cave-in with only a single broken arrow. 

The torchlight - and it must be torchlight - gets closer. Should she charge up to meet them, or retreat into one of the side tunnels to reclaim some semblance of surprise? Goblins can see in the dark, but not as well as she. Their hearing isn’t as acute. They aren’t as quick, but a large enough pack could easily overwhelm her. 

Well. She draws her bow and starts backing down the rail tunnel, breathing fury and fear into her lungs. She came to Erebor to find her love and now she must prove herself worthy of him. How many goblin bodies will it take to win Thorin’s approval? How many must she lay at his feet to freely take the man she loves without severing him from his family?

She intends to find out.


	6. Chapter 6

She can just make out goblin silhouettes amid the flare of torchlight. Even with the battle it brings, that flame is precious as breath and Tauriel drinks it in with watering eyes. On silent Elven feet, she carefully makes her way down to the last tunnel, the one where she was first imprisoned. If she is to make a stand against these fell creatures, she wants the certainty of solid stone on all three sides. 

The fight comes quickly. The torchlight flares around the corner as bright as the sun, twisted goblin bodies limned in halo. She squints into the brightness and fires first, and then again, two goblins falling forward from her perfect aim. A returning volley clatters off the stone behind her. Nimbly dancing between the arrows, she fires again, taking down another three in quick succession. 

Tauriel is trapped here in the dark, frustrated, fearing for Kili, fearing for herself, her heart a wild storm in her chest. She takes a deep breath and everything suddenly floods out on a wave of grimly determined violence. Her knives ache for open air and she obliges them. As the goblins comes closer, she ducks another volley of arrows and twists into the horde, feeling bones and flesh part under the blades. 

They keep coming. She has no way to judge their number, not amid the screeching, clattering din that echoes off the walls and coils around her like bad air. Bodies fall in stinking mounds full of swords and spikes that quickly become hazardous to navigate. Once, she ducks too late and a blade glances off her forehead, falling away as its wielder finds its heart suddenly vacant of blood, Tauriel’s dagger striking true. Another blade, alarmingly close, another thrust between ribs, another goblin falling away. 

Smoke rises up, oily and dense. A dropped torch: leather armor smoldering to open flame. Her heart shudders to a stop and it’s only through the centuries of training set deep within her bones that she isn’t felled. There is no escape, not when the goblins still swarm down the tunnel and the cave-in remains dreadful and solid at her back. Her movements become frantic, less coordinated, and as she ducks and parries, she pushes hard at the child suddenly in control of her mind to wake up, to count itself calm, to stand back and let her try to reason. 

Orange light, syrupy in the haze, flickering like things unremembered and yet still clinging. Kili. She must think of Kili. Think of his smile, the brown sparkle of his eyes, the eager softness of his lips against hers. She is here for him. She will survive for him. She will overcome to rest her fingers on his collarbone, the heat radiating from his core-

The air catches in her lungs. One of her blades skids across armor with a metallic scream that goes straight into her teeth. 

_Calm_. She must clear her head. She can’t let herself be rattled or she will die. 

At that very second, there is a blinding flash of light and a resounding thump so great it momentarily turns her breath hollow and knocks her to the ground as shards like a deluge of oversize hail pummel her senses into stupefaction. Something splits the air, catching the nearest goblin in the face and knocking it back into the darkness. With a rumble, the light becomes brighter, fierce as daylight and suddenly arrows are flying past, striking true in heads and bodies, a great war-cry wrapping the tunnel in its rage. 

_Kili._ And the others! 

With renewed vigor, she follows her knives on their deadly path, twisting amid the chaos and feeling blood and ichor spiral out in her wake. Fresh air flows into her like the most delicious stream and she drinks. 

Between one breath and the next, it’s over. When there is nothing else to slice or cut, she gives in and lets the strength drain from her legs, suddenly utterly exhausted, her body gone numb. Strong arms lift her up, propping her against the wall as if she were no more than a child’s doll. 

“Tauriel,” Kili says urgently, “ _Amrâlimê_ speak.”

Kili. She blinks past black spots and finds herself reflected back in wide, worried eyes. There’s an oozing cut on his chin, another on his cheek where the blood has collected in the cavern of his scar, a bloody canyon that makes her stomach lurch. She puts out a hand and he quickly tucks it against his chest. “...are you hurt?”

“Just a scratch - truly, truly, I will not lie to you, I promise. When those rocks fell-”

“You bleed…”

“Everyone bleeds,” he says, and gingerly touches her forehead. “Including you. Rest a moment. You look undone.”

Somewhere beyond her vision, the Iron Hills Dwarves are picking through the corpses. “Tch,” one snorts, “if the Elves had troubled themself to _join_ us, the battle for Erebor would have been won in an hour.”

“This was the last of these ugly buggers,” another confirms. “It’s time to get well clear. The air here is foul.” They shuffle out, muttering among themselves about the potential for a good beer and a long sit for a smoke. They do not look at her or acknowledge her in any way. 

“Can you stand?” Kili asks.

“I lost count,” Tauriel breathes. “I lost count of them-”

He presses her hand to his lips, not in a kiss, just resting it there as if to assure himself she is a solid, real being. “I cede the victory.” And then, his voice suddenly thick: “Tauriel-”

She can only raise her arms and let him fall against her shoulder.

Standing is an uncertain thing, tentative and unsteady like a newborn deer. The taste of smoke is still thick even with the breeze coming up from the main shaft, and her heart quivers in her throat. Around the entrance to the tunnel, debris lies in shattered piles: the remnants of a detonation. It had taken mining explosives to break down the collapse. Her ears still ring with the sound. 

“There’s a bit of a leap,” Kili says, gesturing to the hastily-assembled plank bridge that stretches across where the path had once been. The stones that fell sheared it down to bare wall. Only by the greatest moment of luck was neither of them crushed. 

She suddenly, wildly, desperately wants to see the sky. Stone hangs overhead, ready to bury them in an impenetrable tomb. The mine shaft yawns to their front, a greedy mouth eager to capture them in its endless maw. The air tastes of smoke and dust and she finds she cannot draw breath. With uncontrollable urgency, she makes the crossing and starts quickly making her way up the path, Kili right behind her. 

They don’t speak for a long time. The only sound is the heavy rush of her breath and the crunch of gravel beneath their boots. When they finally reach the soaring hall of the mine entrance, Kili tugs her to a stop, eyes questioning as he searches her face. 

“I need,” she says haltingly, “the sky.”

He doesn’t hesitate, just takes her hand in his own and walks with firm purpose. 

Eventually, they end up on the battlements, Dale and the lake beyond spreading out with grand langor. 

For a long time, she cannot speak. The sky is pale with the promise of snow, the hidden sun at the horizon a low stain of ochre. A chill wind tugs at her hair, shaking loose bits of rock and pebble. 

Kili watches her intently. They are both of them still bloody, his fingers white around her own. “I woke in the rubble,” he says hoarsely. “It was dark and you weren’t there. I could not accept that you fell. I couldn’t.”

“I do not want to speak of it.” The words come out more harshly than she intends, a reflex. 

“The engineers checked that section,” Kili says. “They spoke only of the goblins. They would not have allowed-”

“Do not speak!” And then the tears come, cold on her skin, the terrified child surrounded by darkness and flame surging forth to consume her wholly.

Immediately, he pulls Tauriel close, wrapping his arms around her waist. He isn’t offering a sly quip or cheerful redirection, just his silent, steady presence. 

He has been like a cloud since since she’s come to Erebor, himself but somehow....reduced. Dampened. The realization sinks into her belly like a stone. This isn’t how he is. This isn’t _who_ he is. He is starlight, bright and pure, a laugh like a flash of a fallen star, incandescent and wild, and she has seen it only a bare handful of times. “Where are you?” she hears herself ask, tilting his face up to hers. “My _gilith_ , so bright and vital? ”

“Where are _you_?” he responds quietly, eyes gone dark and grave. “My golden savior, glowing with purpose?”

He’s right. She is herself lost. In the desperate flight first to Laketown, then to Erebor, amid the growing certainty of her choice, the urgency of her destination, the wild rise of something too relentless and unknown to be called love, whatever she’d once been had been utterly consumed. She _had_ had a singular purpose: find him. Now that he’s found, she feels adrift, caught between the hot burn of his body against hers and the specter of his kin’s disapproval.

“I do not doubt us,” Kili says fiercely, stepping back to grasp her forearms. “From the moment I first saw you, I knew in my heart, even if my head did not. _Amrâlimê_ , I know what I want and that is you, no matter the cost. You cannot tell me you don’t feel the same.”

Before he’d demanded a dagger in the forest, before she’d stared at him through the bars of Thranduil’s dungeon and before his soul and hers aligned like a key and a keyhole, Tauriel had many things she would have professed to value beyond reckoning. Thranduil’s favor, a peerless gift. Legolas’s affection, as close to family as a foundling like herself could ever hope to claim. She had the respect of her peers and the loyalty of her subordinates. She was someone of note, someone with an unquestionable place amid her small world. 

And oh, it had been small. She had thought herself rebellious and bold to go to the borders of Mirkwood, to step just beyond the shadows of the trees into the wide, grassy plain and let herself fall up into the white cloud of stars above. She had thought herself content in her station, expecting her life to change very little from now until the end of Arda. She’d been _glad_ of that certainty. 

How wrong she had been. One easy smile and Kili consumed her whole. It had been as swift as fever, as wild as foam-flecked rapids, as sudden and blinding as phosphor. She came to him without hesitation, without shame, casting aside all her centuries of safety without looking back. She trained an arrow at her king and drew Legolas into treachery beside her. 

Now, here is Kili, standing in front of her, alive despite all reason. Tauriel wrenched the poison from his body and in doing so claimed him, poured herself into his veins and there she will burn forever. Elves love once in their long lives and he is her choice, now and until her soul departs for the Undying Lands. His mortality is a grief oncoming and steady as a distant storm, but at this moment, he is hers and that alone is worth all future sorrow. 

“ _Gilith_ ,” she says, and finds his mouth with her own.

* * *

Kili pulls her behind a crumbling pillar, out of the wind and down upon a fallen block of stone, his fingers sinking into her hair. Immediately, Tauriel arches over him, taking his breath into her own lungs. He burns with life, with vitality, with every essential force that can overwhelm darkness, fear and pain. His lips are at once sweet and urgent, his beard rough on her skin. 

He is here. He is _here_ and even though she’s held him in rare moments since she came to Erebor, it feels like the first time they’ve truly touched. This is coming home. He is here, solid and grounding, his body radiating heat even through his mail, the heavy musk of his sweat flooding her mouth and nose. How easy it would be to lose herself, to lay back and let him consume her, to release her spirit into the space behind his ribs and simply...stay. 

Tauriel wants that. She wants that very, very much. She _starves_ for it. Her hands ache with emptiness and she presses her palms to his shoulderblades, remembering him on the bridge in Mirkwood and how his wet tunic draped around the powerful curve of his spine, that moment that stole her breath in the middle of battle and cemented her fate. 

His mouth brushes the underside of her jaw, sensation blooming like a cloud of fireflies across her skin. She shivers, her fingers seeking the gap between his skin and his cowl, and the noise Kili makes is _transcendent_. 

They’re wrapped around each other so tightly they don’t hear the crunch of heavy boots on gravel until it’s much too close. “Guards,” Kili hisses, and there’s a mad scramble as they both try to arrange themselves in some semblance of propriety. 

Two shadows stretch across the battlement, followed by two stout Dwarves, each with a thick battleaxe balanced on their shoulder. One stretches a little, looking out over into the valley. “Snow?” 

The other nods easily. “By nightfall, or I’ll eat my beard.”

Tauriel holds her breath, Kili’s face pressed into her arm and silently shaking with startled laughter that makes the pressure in her lungs almost unbearable. The guards loiter, making idle talk about the upcoming weather, their plans for the evening and their hopes for bringing their families from the Iron Hills. Neither turns around, neither looks behind the pillar, neither pays any notice to the two figures curled back in the shadows. 

After an agonizing stretch of time, the guards finally amble away. When they are out of earshot, Kili dissolves into, gods help her, _giggles_ , as if the two of them are children who have narrowly escaped with purloined sweets. 

But of a sort, they have. Her lips burn with the taste of his skin and she can’t help the bubble of mirth that rises from her own chest. “We should return,” she says breathlessly. They are still covered in dust and blood, redolent with goblin stench and smoke. 

“Just a few more minutes.” His eyes sparkle and oh, here is her _gilith_ , unrepentant and incorrigible, his mouth as welcome as the dawn.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two things:
> 
> \- You people are amazing and the reason I do what I do. Fic is my love letter to a fandom. I heart y'all, from the lurkiest lurkers to the chattiest commenters. So much love.
> 
> \- Soooo. I try to keep things as close to canon as possible while still doing what I want. For Starlight, I tried very hard to keep it consistent with Tolkien's style. I started with the same intent on this, but our dear professor is somewhat light on gore and I like wacky stories with ribcages in them, so naturally things have gone completely off the rails. As always, if you find something that ought to be tagged that I've forgotten to tag, let me know and I'm happy to add it.

She wants Kili. She wants to curl around him like she did that first night, his breath warm on her collarbone. She wants to drown in his mouth, the tenderness of his lips and the glow of his eyes in firelit dark. Instead, he is a prince, called upon by his uncle to do princely things, and she is...barely a guest. An intruder. A poisonous serpent, perhaps, waiting to strike. She is tasked with small things - clearing opportunistic rats from the larders, bringing soft winter ptarmigan in from the glacier above - all of which she might have once considered an insult to her skill and station. Now, fallen as she is, she does these things without complaint, wrapping any resentment around the glowing kernel of her love and swallowing it down. This was never going to be easy. Centuries of resentment between their people will not be unwound in a month.

Still. 

They cannot be kept from each other _all_ the time, and brief moments appear like sparks, a quick frisson of light and heat. 

“Kiss me,” he whispers, face blooming with delighted mischief as he pulls her into a shadowed corner. “Quick, before anyone sees.”

Tauriel does not need any encouragement. 

It becomes a game: the more innocent they make themselves appear, the greater the reward. If they are seated beside each other at a table, she shifts ever so slightly to press a foot against his ankle. If he hands her an arrow on the practice grounds, his fingers linger against hers an extra heartbeat longer than needed. 

What neither of them expects is that suddenly, even the smallest gesture becomes as hot and intimate as if they were alone and naked. 

“You are going to get caught,” Fili finally says. The three of them are comfortably seated on the battlements above the main gate, watching the sunset cast shadows over Dale’s towers. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kili retorts. 

Fili gives his brother a pointed glance. “Uncle will kill you both.”

“He would _not_ ,” Tauriel blurts, abruptly thrust into that awful moment amid battle, of Thranduil standing before her with his sword at her throat.

“He doesn’t mean literally,” Kili says quickly. 

Fili snorts. “I wouldn’t say it’s out of the question.”

“Fee, you wouldn’t _tell_ -”

“It’s not a matter of _telling_. He does have eyes, you know.”

“Well, I don’t care,” Kili huffs with great vehemence, and grabs at Tauriel’s hand. “And why should I?”

“He’ll tell _Mother_.”

Kili goes still beside her.

“You hadn’t even thought of that,” Fili says, but there’s no triumph in his voice, only a weary concern. He looks from Kili to Tauriel and then back to his brother. “You _know_ this is going to be hard. Do you want to go into that conversation with a rational argument or do you want Uncle to dismiss you as a sneaking child? This is _important_ , Kili.” He turns to Tauriel. “Uncle owes you our lives and he won’t soon forget it, but a son of Durin taking an Elf to wife is a battle I fear will not be won.”

“I’ll leave,” Kili says decisively. “Tauriel and I will leave-”

“No,” she breaks in. “I will not let you.”

Fili sighs with irritation, interrupting them both. “I’m not saying it _cannot_ be won. You know I would never speak against you.”

“You...do not disapprove?” Tauriel asks hesitantly.

For a long time, Fili doesn’t respond, just staring out into the valley at the wide lake beyond. “How can I?” he finally says, and reaches over to palm the back of his brother’s neck. He meets Tauriel’s gaze. “I could no sooner stop the sunrise. But _you_ ,” he adds, giving Kili a shake, “would do well to practice a little discretion.”

Kili squirms, but he’s grinning. “I make no promises.”

Fili just rolls his eyes. “On your head, then.”

* * *

It happens by accident, but Fili seems to love the open air as much as she does and they not infrequently encounter each other seeking out the sky. Rarely, they have congenial, animated conversation, but most of the time, he just seems quiet and distracted, mumbling responses as if he’s barely aware she’s there. From anyone else, it would feel like a snub, but there is such a tiredness about him those days, she cannot fault him for his silence.

On this particular day, Tauriel finds him sitting on the battlements, tucked into a little crevice that provides shelter from bitter wind blown under a cloudless sun. His fingers trace the pages of the book splayed open on his lap, but his eyes gaze unfocused into the distance. 

“Can you read Dwarven runes?” he says without preamble.

“I was under the impression that such knowledge is fiercely guarded.”

“I thought all Elves were wise and learned.”

“I am not all Elves.”

There’s a huff of breath. “I look at these pages and see nothing more than scratches. I cannot read dice.” He holds up a hand. “I know how many fingers a hand should have, but I _cannot count them_.” Abruptly, he rises and viciously hurls the book over the wall. “What good is a king who cannot _read_!” 

He sinks back down, pressing his palms to his eyes. “Everything is made of words. Words on a page, words in the air. Kili would have me sit with a primer and slate like a child until it all becomes clear again.”

“Is he so wrong?”

Emotion glistens in his pale eyes. “I taught _him_.”

“There is nothing in his heart but love for you.”

“Oh? And you claim to know him so well?”

“He is clever,” she says. “He is courageous and kind. He sees the darkness of the world and responds to it with hope. I have never met anyone who carries inside them such joy.”

“He is loyal, too,” Fili says quietly, and Tauriel suddenly realizes this is a challenge. “He loves easily and deeply. You do not deserve him.”

“I do not,” she agrees. 

“If he becomes king...” He shakes his head. “There’s no other I would trust to keep my brother safe, both in body and in heart, but there is too much history between our peoples to have you as his queen.”

“I know.” 

“I cannot read.” Fili spits a word in Khuzdul that needs no translation. “I cannot write, I cannot do sums. How can I be king if I cannot determine such simple things as trade balances or building costs?”

“You have many at your side,” Tauriel counters. “And such things can recover with time.”

“And if they don’t?” His voice is bleak. “What is the difference between taking counsel and being too weak to rule?”

“You know the difference,” she says. “Or you would not be questioning yourself.”

“What of the others? A sickness already lies upon the line of Durin. If I am anything other than sound of mind, my fitness is challenged.” Fili shakes his head. “How is Elvish medicine so incomplete? You healed him in a single day. I know you favor him-”

“I would never sever him from you,” she says fiercely, hands gone bloodless in her lap. She cannot tell Fili of sinking into his body, of finding him empty as a drum, the essence of him dribbling away as she frantically tried to stanch the flow. “The power to restore life is diminished in those who choose to take it, and I am a soldier. I have always been. I had no confidence that I could pull the poison from him and with absolute truth, I do not know if I could do it twice. Bodies are less certain. I tried. Please believe that I tried.”

He’s silent for a long while. “I think...I think I felt you there.” Sorrow etches his forehead. “Forgive me my anger. The healers that came after you...I’m grateful, I truly am, but...” He gestures to his head with resignation. “I think I could more easily accept the loss of a limb than this.”

There’s a surge of something in Tauriel’s chest, a truth that suddenly bursts forth without warning or control. “I lost speech.”

His full attention is instant and intense. 

“I was a child.” She wants to stop. She hasn’t spoken of this in many centuries. She _healed_ and the story no longer matters- “My parents died and I could not speak.”

Choking smoke, the heat, the _heat_ , her skin burning, her eyes and hair and throat as she screamed for someone who never came. She shudders, trying to swallow back the remembered panic. A thick blanket dropped over her like a shroud, anonymous arms clutching her as she thrashed. 

“What happened?” Fili asks quietly. 

“I was told it was Orcs,” she makes herself say, and though it comes hollow in her ears, her voice is steady. “I do not remember.”

It’s not entirely a lie, but the half-truth must be plain on her face. His eyes flick across her features, but he doesn’t challenge her. “How old were you?”

“Forty.”

There’s a sharp intake of breath. Perhaps a child even by Dwarven standards. “And you were hurt so badly?”

“Elves heal quickly. I recovered easily, but I was-” Trapped. Locked away. Choked as if by dark magic- “mute for many years after.”

“You can speak well enough now.”

“I had much support.”

“From your family?”

“Of a sort.”

Fili frowns. “Of a sort?”

She briefly closes her eyes, breathing steadily through her nose. She has started this recounting and now she must continue or lose the trust she so desperately needs from Kili’s brother. “I had no true kin. I was taken in by Thranduil and made his ward.” She looks up from clenched hands to meet his stunned countenance. “You are not an Elf so I cannot expect you to fully comprehend, but when I tell you I betrayed my people to follow Kili, please understand the weight of my actions.”

“You-”

“I was held in great favor. I lived in his household and found greatest comfort with his son Legolas.”

“And now-”

“Legolas helped me regain my voice,” she says quietly. “It took many years, much effort and great patience, but now I speak. I was a child then. You are grown. Recovery is possible, even if it feels distant and dire. That is why I tell you this.”

Fili blinks and gives his head a shake as if to clear it. “Does my brother know?”

“No,” she says. “Please let me tell him in my own time.”

“How could you even make that choice? It was madness to follow us.”

“It was no true choice,” she says. “I can no sooner abandon him than abandon my own breath.”

There’s a long moment of silence. Fili brings out his pipe, tamps tobacco into the bowl, and tucks the used striker back into his jacket. “What if you must?” he finally asks, exhaling a slow, sweet cloud. “What happens if I fail as king and he must take my place? Or if you are no longer welcome here?”

“If I must, I must. His safety is more important than my grief.”

Abruptly, Fili laughs, a brittle sound that shivers across the battlement. “Why _my_ brother? Of all your own kin, of all the Men and Dwarves and Hobbits, you’ve chosen my brother?”

“It is as fate wills.”

“It’s not fate, it’s _insanity_.” He shakes his head with a long-suffering chuckle. “Running off despite your king after barely knowing Kili a handful of days, and we all thought _he_ was the reckless one. You are truly meant for each other.” Almost to himself, he adds ruefully, “I only fear for the rest of us.”


	8. Chapter 8

The forces of Azog and Bolg were soundly routed, but some small pockets still remain. It is a clear, sunny morning when one such party ventures too far south and a small force is hastily dispatched.

It’s the first time Tauriel has been truly outside Erebor in a double handful of weeks, and her heart thrills. It’s bitterly cold at this elevation, the dragon-blasted landscape as barren as Gundabad, but...bland. Empty of magic, devoid of the sour-iron taste that filled her lungs and burned her heart. Instead, patches of snow reflect the light, a brightness so complete her eyelids mean nothing. 

Kili’s cheeks are ruddy, his grin more blinding than the snow. “Be cautious,” she says, the words suddenly thick in her throat. Her memory of Ravenhill is diffuse as fog, but what she does recall includes the stench of Orc bodies and the taste of blood and ice. 

“Yes,” he agrees, suddenly sober. “You too.”

They are together with the same cohort taken into the goblin tunnels - five Iron Hills warriors whose manner ranges from gruff to outright hostile - and it’s no place for affection. Instead, they exchange silent reassurance and turn their path to the north flank of Erebor. 

For most of the day, there is no sign of their quarry, and by nightfall there is universal agreement to bed down and wait for dawn. They find a shallow cave, mercifully out of the wind and affording a small fire easily hidden from outside view. “I can take watch,” Tauriel offers. “I have rested well and do not need-”

Glath son of Glain, one of the Iron Hills Dwarves, mutters something in Khuzdul that makes Kili bolt upright with his hand on his sword. “Take that back!”

“Sit down, princeling. Some of us do not take to old enemies so easily,” the old Dwarf growls, and stiffly makes his way to the cave entrance with his axe and his whetstone. He doesn’t deign to give Tauriel a glance. 

There is murder in Kili’s eyes and Tauriel gives a quick shake of her head. He opens his mouth to argue, then decides better and shuts it with a snap. He knows. He could defend her further, but it would only serve to inflame an already tenuous peace. _Sleep_ , she mouths at him and glowering, he nods and settles into his bedroll. 

She wishes they were just two and could seek each other’s warmth without fear or apprehension.

Taking her bow, she leaves the cave mouth, saying quietly to Glath, “I will see if our quarry dares a fire,” and getting only a disinterested grunt in reply.

Tauriel must be a bridge. She must be pliant as a river. She must prove herself a willing ally if she ever wants to win the approval of Kili’s kin, and to do that, she must swallow back the urge to run her blades across certain heavily-bearded necks.

The glow of the cave drops away almost immediately and she feels a swell of pride knowing the camp is so expertly hidden. Under an absent moon, stars like delicate frogspawn hang in great chains across the sky. In a dark, languid sweep, the wide flank of the mountain falls toward the valley, pinpricks of distant red identifying the Withering Heath and the magma she’s been told seeps from its wounded ground.

It is a beautiful night, so clear and clean that when she turns her head to the stars, it feels like a single kick could send her soaring up into the sparkling black. 

She left the stars, once. It’s less a memory and more a sense deep in her bones. For the first time, Tauriel thinks about that refusal and how it could be seen as the height of arrogance, a betrayal even greater than when she drew her bow against Thranduil. Who is she to turn away from the halls of her ancestors? Greater Elves than her have gone willingly, making the long trek to the Grey Havens and the endless sea beyond. Who is she, Silvan, ordinary, unremarkable, to think her place here more important than in the Halls of Mandos?

Perhaps she isn’t wholly to blame. She has never had any patience for old songs and tales, but a fragment like dusty parchment ascends in her mind: in the Eldar Days, her people had stopped on their own Great Journey, choosing to claim what came to be Mirkwood as their home. Perhaps the urge to remain in Arda is part of blood. 

It was a selfish choice, one in a long line of selfish choices, and when Tauriel looks back toward the hidden cave, her heart warms with grateful certainty.

The mountain around her is quiet, no sound except the bare whistle of merciless wind. She traverses the boulder field, taking care not to knock loose any gravel and eventually comes to stand on a slight outcropping. In the distance, an orange flicker amid the rocks announces the Orc camp. 

Tauriel hesitates. She could go back and get the others, or she could investigate and perhaps pick off a few with her bow. She’d told Kili to be sensible, but she is not a noisy Dwarf. 

Dropping lightly from her perch, she creeps across the glacial till, moving from boulder to boulder as cover. The camp heaves into view, a messy collection of figures crouched around an anemic fire fuelled by collected scrub. Flattening herself to the ground, Tauriel settles in to watch. 

There are twenty of them, each outfitted in kit that has definitely seen battle. Most of them wear variations of the thick plate favored by the Gundabad foot soldier, though a couple are clad in nothing more than poorly-tanned hides held together with raw metal clasps and pins of bone. One is ostensibly on watch, but clearly bored and picking at a weeping sore on his forearm. His fellows are evenly divided between resting on the bare gravel and eagerly gnawing at what could have been a pair of marmots pulled from their winter den. 

Along with Kili and the Iron Hills Dwarves, her party numbers seven. The odds are uneven, but not impossibly so. Her hand goes to her bow and for a long moment, she almost nocks an arrow. It would be so easy. Tauriel is an excellent shot and her enemy would be caught completely unaware. 

_Be cautious_. 

Swallowing a sigh, she slowly rises and begins the trek back to her own companions. 

* * *

At the cave entrance, Haddic has taken over for Glath, and eyes her with narrow suspicion. “You’ve been gone half the night.”

“I found our quarry,” Tauriel says mildly. Elves are hardy, but the cold still bites through to her bones. The fire is very welcome. “They are camped over the next ridge and down slope.”

He grunts. “How many?”

“Twenty. All armed, armored but not heavily.”

Another grunt. “Easy enough.”

She chokes back a surge of irritation and instead settles with her back to the stone to meditate until dawn. If it were just the two of them, she’d go and curl up around Kili, tucking him against her chest and drinking in his warmth, but it isn’t just the two of them, so she makes herself content with watching the steady rise and fall of his breath. 

* * *

Dawn comes pale and pink, the sun softly haloed with the promise of coming snow. The air is absent of heat in a way that makes Tauriel’s lungs feel like stone. Kili steams with enthusiasm, slapping the others about their shoulders in an effort to get them moving and generally making a nuisance of himself. 

She loves him. Even tempered by injury and loss, even with the blow to his innocence delivered on Ravenhill, he is radiant, a source of unending joy and determination. He is starlight, the key and the keyhole, that first moment when they looked at each other and she felt something in her chest break free. Neither of them are the people they once were - he with his great scar, she in exile - but nothing has changed in his core. 

He brings them all into a circle and outlines the day’s mission. For all their grumbling, the older Dwarves listen and find little to criticize. Shortly, the company is on the move, following Tauriel’s path across the mountain from the night before. 

When the Dwarves come over the rise, the Orcs look up the slope and immediately move to intercept, scrambling through the rolling scree. Kili raises his sword with a bellow and takes the charge, Glath beside him, his axe shining and hungry for blood. Tauriel hangs back with her bow, sending a quick volley of arrows that fell what might be the Orc leader. Tumbling into the fray, she releases her knives, slicing through first a throat and then severing a spine. The sound of battle swallows her in, the clash of metal and roar of contact. Her incentive to kill these foul creatures has only grown since she saw Kili under siege at Ravenhill, and the added challenge of slippery, uneven ground opens her up like a window, her skill the wind coming to scour all in its path. 

Kili is here, at her back and then at her side, then at her back again, a flash of white teeth and dark hair, his blade as bright as snow under the cold sun. “Three,” he hisses in passing. 

“Greedy,” she retorts, and is rewarded with a laugh, though at the end she tallies herself with seven. 

Only when the battle is won and Kili stumbles toward her, ashen-faced, hands outstretched, does she register the ache in her shoulder. Turning her head, she finds her sleeve down to her wrist soaked through, a flood of crimson issuing from a neat slice near her clavicle. She blinks at it, not understanding, and then Kili is beside her, pressing hard against the flow. “It is little more than a cut,” she starts to say, but the look he gives her is such a sharp, dark rebuke that she falls silent, letting him wrap a quick bandage around her arm without further protest.

As a group they quickly inspect the bodies and start the trek back around the mountain. Nerlig is nursing a nasty blow to the shin, hobbling with his fellows and complaining mightily as the others hoot and trade well-intentioned insults. 

She spends the journey in something of a fugue, one hand pressed against the bleeding and her mind chasing after a vague unease. Something about the injury tickles at her consciousness, something that disappears when she reaches for it. It was a neat slice, deep, almost surgical, so thin that despite the great volume of blood, it doesn’t truly _hurt_. Orc weapons can certainly be sharp, but their blades are wicked, serrated things, rarely having the fierce, clean lines of Elven make. 

Or Dwarven. 

With a sudden chill, she looks around at her companions. Even an axe can be ground to such precision. It was an errant swing. It had to be, but none of these men are novice warriors. Surrounding her is a sum of years even greater than her own, each day etched into scarred and weatherworn faces. They haven’t trained with Elves, she tells herself. They are unfamiliar with her fighting style. They are all untested with each other, the company not yet a single entity. 

A slight change in position and she’d be missing an arm. Or her head. 

No. This is madness. There is a far greater chance the blade was Orcish and poisoned, this flood of delusion a symptom. The others may dislike her, may resent her presence and everything she represents, but they would not kill her. To think otherwise insults their honor and that above all else is the bedrock of what it means to be Dwarven. 

* * *

Back within Erebor, Tauriel forgoes a visit to Oin and immediately retreats to her rooms. As soon as the door closes, she strips to the waist with shaking hands, twisting to examine the wound in sharp candlelight. 

It looks utterly unremarkable. It smells of iron, fresh and untainted, not even the barest hint of rot. Nothing malevolent presses at her senses, no bitter intent burns her nose.

No curse, no enchantment.

She counts her breaths until her heartbeat calms and then collects a basin of water and a cloth. The blood comes away easily, a touch of the cloth eliciting no more pain than expected. Her Elven body is already working to seal away open flesh and knit together split skin. Despite the depth, it will heal quickly and cleanly, and in a week, there won’t even be a scar. If it is a subtle poison, she won’t know for hours, perhaps even days, but in this moment, the wound feels as mundane as any other. 

A sudden pounding on the door jerks her back to herself. “Tauriel!”

Kili. 

Her mind goes blank. She’s partially nude, which under any other circumstance would be a _thrilling_ premise, but instead she just feels exposed and uncomfortable. She needs to finish attending to the wound, and she can’t just tuck herself back into a sleeve so sodden even Elven fabric will require a long soak. Kili calls her name again and she finally grabs her discarded cloak to drape over herself. 

He almost falls through the door when she opens it and for a long moment, they stare at each other. “...may I come in?”

Her mouth goes dry. “You know there will be talk.”

“Let them,” he says dismissively, and holds up a small ceramic pot. “I brought salve.”

“I should accept it here and turn you away.”

“You should.” His eyes are dark and anxious. “Please don’t.”

Tauriel cannot refuse him. She steps aside and lets him pass. 

Inside, he looks first at the basin on the table with its bloody cloth and then to the cloak she clutches to her throat. “Will you let me see it?”

“It is fine.”

“You’ve been silent from the moment we won that fight. _Amrâlimê_ , do I need to worry?”

Any argument dissolves. She sits back down at the table and exposes the smallest portion of her shoulder. “It is small and clean,” she says. “Almost closed.”

Kili puts the salve beside the basin and pulls a chair close, taking up the cloth. His hand steadiest her elbow and even through the thick cloak, his touch is scorching. At any other moment, it would be a suggestion, a proposal, and she would let the cloak fall into her lap, shivering with anticipation of his response. 

Instead, Tauriel remains covered, folded inside herself and still. He dabs at the wound, perfectly chaste, infinitely gentle. She’s reminded that however blunt and powerful Dwarf fingers seem, they are also capable of jewel-craft so delicate even Elves look upon it in awe. Her people have lost so much to their hatred. It makes her heart ache. 

“Talk to me,” he entreats. 

She cannot. She cannot give voice to the troubling thoughts that hang heavy in her throat. It’s madness. She’s mad. She knows well the sentiment against her, but would someone dare strike? And the Iron Hills Dwarves in the company - they’re vocal in their mistrust, but they swear fealty to Dain and Dain has sworn fealty to Thorin. Thorin has shown leniency with her presence so therefore she’s protected. She must be.

“ _Tauriel._ ” A frisson of alarm leaks into his voice. 

“Forgive me.” She briefly touches the hand that holds her elbow. “Perhaps I lost more blood than I thought.”

“Have we not sworn each other the truth?”

Nothing she’s said has been a lie. “I am tired. I need to rest.”

With spare, tender movements, he wipes away the last of the blood and gently applies a generous amount of salve before winding the linen bandage into place. When it’s done, he tugs the cloak back over her shoulder and looks up into her face. “Will you eat?”

She is abruptly exhausted, bereft of any ability save the movement from table to bed. The room spins a little when she stands. “No. Just sleep.”

Kili follows her to the bedroom and huffs when she hesitates. “I would hold you and keep you warm,” he says wistfully, “but we promised Fili _discretion_ , didn’t we?”

She doesn’t want discretion. She wants to feel his mouth on hers, and wherever else he wants to taste. She wants his dense heat to chase away the chill in her marrow. If there were no consequences, if they were just two together, she would wrap her arms around him and lay him down in her bed, and perhaps there wouldn’t be more than simple comfort.

Perhaps there would. 

In this moment, nothing is certain. She looks at him, at the tousled walnut-black of his hair, the warm brown of his eyes, the beard starting to fill out in a way that promises a magnificence truly worthy of the royal line. The jagged canyon of his scar, the way he wears it as if it were merely a rakish accessory and not a sharp reminder of how close she came to losing him. 

“Will you help me with my boots?” she finally asks. Her arm is going stiff. Clumsy fingers will make the work even harder. 

So she sits on the edge of the bed while Kili gently unpicks the laces, and then tucks her cloak more securely around her shoulders as if she were no more than a child. “Sleep,” he says, and presses his lips to her forehead. “I will see you soon.”

* * *

Tauriel does sleep, and manages to do so without any unquiet dreams. She wakes easily, the passage of time blurred in Erebor’s unchanging light, reassured to find whatever half-remembered worries have blown away like so much dust. 

She goes in search of breakfast and finds instead a late lunch, having slept almost a full day. Her arm is sore, but much improved, so she steps out to locate Kili in a pleasantly cheerful mood. 

He’s in the library, of all places, a vast series of rooms lit with crystal lamps and redolent with the sweetness of old paper, so engrossed in his text that he doesn’t notice when she steps, Elven-light, to drop a kiss on the top of his head. 

With a yelp, he slams the book shut, whirling to first hide it behind his back and then to awkwardly thrust onto the shelf. “Nothing! It’s fine! Research! Nothing!”

“Was that an anatomy text?”

Kili’s face blossoms crimson. “No! Yes. Why are you asking?”

She can’t stop the smile from twisting her lips. “Why are you embarrassed?”

“I’m not embarrassed, you are. I was just reading. I read.” 

He is flustered as a damp robin, and it’s utterly enchanting. “Keep your secrets, then.” 

“I...came in looking for a book for Fili,” he says lamely. “And found...other things.”

“Did you find what you sought?”

“Several.” He produces a series of thin volumes, each done in burnished leather and tooled with large, bold runes. “He’ll hate that these are for children, but I don’t know what else to offer.”

“He knows you want to help. That will temper any perceived insult.”

Kili gnaws his lip. “You think so?”

“Be gentle, both with him and yourself. Such things are not regained in a day.”

“But they can be regained?”

“I cannot make a promise I have no power to keep, but I have hope.”

He heaves a sigh of relief and turns immediately to her arm. “How do you feel?”

“Much improved. I needed the rest more than I thought.”

His face brightens, every feature exuding joy, and after a quick glance around to determine they are, indeed, alone amid the shelves, she bends her head to drink the smile from his lips.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Teeny chapter, sorry - didn’t have a good place to break it up and the next one’s lorj.

News comes that a great host has been sighted on the horizon coming from the Iron Hills, and all of Erebor erupts in celebration. Grizzled warriors become giddy as children, and once again Tauriel marvels at how wrong Thranduil has been. All around her, she sees a battle-hardened army transformed into eager fathers, husbands and sons, the infamous greed of the Dwarves, now turned toward the golden glow of a family hearth. It has been a month since Smaug was defeated and even though there is still much work to be done, having kin reunited will fill the empty halls with gladness missing for so long. 

For herself, Tauriel feels like an island, a tall, foreign presence around which the anticipation eddies and flows. She is already set apart from the culture of Erebor; an influx of newcomers will only increase her isolation. In recent days, the loss of Mirkwood cuts particularly deep. The novelty of her tenuous new home is wearing off and no amount of gilt rail or soaring tower can soothe the ache. Dol Guldur is cleansed. Perhaps this means the huge swaths of Mirkwood gone malevolent and diseased can now heal. Legolas had promised to beg her case, but she knows Thranduil’s heart: for the rest of her days, she will only see Mirkwood as a distant forest, never again from under its canopy. 

It’s easy to be maudlin and she finally succumbs, stealing away to one of the upper balconies of the great entrance, tucking her cloak around herself in the sharp wind. Mirkwood flows along the river, cradling the lake with thick, imposing arms. Her heart grieves for it, a deep, clinging pain, darker than any night and harder than any stone. She chose Kili and she would do so a hundred times over, but the hurt lingers.

He finds her, then, indulging her misery and watching the sunset through a blur of tears, and comes to press his shoulder against hers. “ _Amrâlimê_?”

Tauriel blinks the world back into focus, offering a wan smile. “I am glad to be here with you, but sometimes the stone hangs heavy over my head.”

“Is there no hope at all?”

“I am with you,” she repeats, putting her fingers through his hair. “That is hope enough.”

He’s missing his usual clasp, thick tendrils falling to hang in his eyes. Every other Dwarf is so fastidious about their appearance, taking great care in creating braids and adorning them with intricate beads. Balin is the only one who appears without any ornament, but he still carries an aura of refined grace. Kili is, on occasion, to put it delicately, disheveled.

Tauriel finds the beads fascinating. She had asked once if there was any particular significance, and Kili had promptly gone three shades of crimson, stammered out an incomprehensible string of words and avoided her eyes for an hour. The entire incident informed her that yes, there was indeed great significance, but she had not dared ask again. Perhaps it was a secret only for Dwarves, held as precious as their language.

“Perhaps Legolas-” he starts.

“Some things cannot be changed,” she says, and brushes the hair from his face. 

“They _will_ change.”

There is nothing to counter, so she just puts her arms about his neck and rests her chin on his crown, letting the thick smell of his body overwhelm her senses. 

“If...you renounce me,” Kili says hesitantly, hoarsely, the words more terrible than Black Speech, “could you return then?”

“Do not even say such things. I will not.”

“And I’m asking if you could.”

“My answer is the same.”

He turns his face to hers, the setting sun highlighting the gold in his eyes, rich as a riverbank and warm as mead on a lonely night. “I do not deserve such faith.”

“Yet here it is.”

“And _you_. How is it that I came to stand here, in the home of my fathers, with more love in my heart than I ever knew it could hold, and you looking back at me saying such things?” His lips twist. “You are my love, my shining savior, the one I will cherish until I die, but you...why would you partner yourself with me?”

“Such things are intangible.” She leans down to kiss him softly, gently. “Or perhaps I seek dominion over Erebor by beguiling a son of Durin.”

“Not difficult, that. Consider me beguiled.” He tilts his head. “But you, beautiful, immortal Elf. Captain of the Guard. Armies of handsome Elven men clamoring to be the one by your side. Or armies of women,” he adds thoughtfully. “I don’t believe I’ve ever asked.”

“You,” she says. “That is my affection. Only you.”

“Be serious.” He leans in, an easy grin. “Six hundred years, you have to have _lots_ of experience.” On _lots_ , he waggles his eyebrows. 

_Gilith_. So incorrigible, so beloved. “More than you could ever dream.”

Apprehension crosses his face. “Truly?”

“Elves love once,” she says. “I have told you that before.”

"But you live forever." 

"Yes," she says. 

“And…” The question gnaws its way up from deep inside. He isn’t one for introspection, but here it comes anyway. “If I die? We are hardy people, but still mortal, despite our best efforts.”

Perhaps because Mirkwood is such a current hurt, and the caverns below them will soon be filled with joyous families that aren’t hers, and Tauriel is feeling keenly the bite of her difference, his words land heavier than at other moments. She has to take a breath and calm the tears that threaten to spring. “I will hold the memory of our time together close to my heart.”

“It has been poor memory-making.” He sighs and turns to look out over the valley. “All these things I’m drawn into..it was easier to be prince of a people in exile. No committees, _far_ fewer contract discussions. Much more fighting. I haven’t shot anything in _days_ . Still,” he says, cheering, “Fili is making some progress. This morning we counted to _five_.”

Something in her chest comes unknotted. She’s feared she had given him false hope, and she is deeply glad to be wrong.

“Stay with me,” Kili says suddenly. “Tonight. Together. In two days, Erebor will be so full we won’t be able to _look_ at each other without a hundred elders passing comment.”

Tauriel wants that. _Oh_ , she wants that. Her mouth goes dry at the thought. She has woken in the dark hours of the night aching for his body, her fingers searching out a release that is always too sudden and painfully incomplete. In those moments, she has thought of him lying alone in his own bed, and has had to bite her hands to keep herself from abandoning all sense and propriety to go running to his side. She loves him with a wildness that is terrifying in its power, and wants more than anything to declare themselves bound together in the oldest, most irrevocable way. 

“I, ah. I also have something for you. If you want it.”

“Is it something in your trousers?” It slips from her mouth before she can censor herself. 

He stares at her in consternation, color rising to his cheeks, and then throws his head back, a delighted roar that engulfs the landscape around them. Tauriel struggles, but even the sturdiest dam will break and then she, too, is laughing.

“Terrible,” he manages. “It was terrible then and it’s terrible now. I have corrupted you.”

“Or liberated.”

“Corrupted.”

“Perhaps a bit.”

As the aftershocks die away, he curls a lock of her hair around his thumb. “I love you,” he says fervently. “You are the brightest light I have ever known and I never want to separate.”

“Never,” she agrees, and at his touch feels more tethered than she has in days. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I was doing a Tueday/Friday posting, but this thing is getting long and at that rate, we'd be here until June. My attention span isn't that long, so I'm bumping it up to Tuesday, Friday and Sunday posts. Hope you like!

But their night together does not come to pass. 

Tauriel goes to him after the evening meal, trembling heart and trembling hands, keeping her head high and her walk steady and calm. She’s a guest often enough in the palace that her presence isn’t as notable as it once was, and aside from a genuine, if distracted, greeting from Nori as he moves past, no one remarks. 

She wonders what would happen if she just...refused to leave. 

Thorin would toss her off the battlements, perhaps. Part of her is certain everyone knows and is studiously ignoring the facts set before them. If she were to claim what she wants, if she were to make it obvious and flaunt Kili like a conquest, any future she wants would be snuffed as surely as a candle.

Kili meets her at the door to his apartment buzzing with nervous energy and desperately trying to be casual about it. Tauriel hasn’t been in these rooms since the day she arrived and it seems so strange to see the table bare of herbs and poultices, to see the fire bright and cheerful, the accoutrements of a young warrior strewn about with careless grace. It smells of life: smoke, oiled leather, the dense sweetness of his favored tobacco and underscoring all of that, the warm musk of his skin. 

Once the door is shut behind her, Kili goes to the table and pulls out a chair for her. Curious, she sits and he pulls another chair to sit across from her, their knees lightly touching. 

He rubs his hands on his thighs and takes a deep breath. “ _Amrâlimê_ ,” he starts, the word as soft and lovely as it was the first moment she heard it, offered on a rocky shore with the survivors of a ruined town wailing around them. Four syllables: a lullaby, a prayer, the exhale of a lover. Four syllables, a gift she would only come to understand as she lay dying. “You have given up so much for me and borne such hardship in being here. You never complain, but I’ve seen it. Not just today - you carry it so quietly that I forget what it costs you.”

“There is nowhere else-”

“Tauriel.” She falls silent. “My people are so _stubborn._ Never once would I have thought to be frustrated with that, but no matter what they say, you belong here. You belong with me and I with you and I will never let us be parted.”

There are moments when the mischievous youth in the dungeon breaks through like sunlight through passing cloud, and then there are moments like this when there is a man before her, a blooded warrior, an heir to an ancient bloodline, fully aware of the weight and import of his actions. She’s seen him scared, his eyes fever-bright as he wept with pain. She’s seen his smile, the satisfaction of a well-placed arrow, the utter surety of his own body and all that it can do. She’s seen grief, deeper and more raw than even the scar on his face, tasted her own blood on his lips as he cradled her in the snow. So many people in a single body. 

Perhaps that’s the way of mortals, to hold themselves as a city in their own skin, their lives too short to weave their being into a steady, coherent pattern. Perhaps it’s like their love, distilled down to its blazing essence, a wild flood of emotion forced into a single century, if not a single decade. Elves have no need to rush. Time is nothing to them. Their passion is just as great, but by their nature, they know no urgency, no need to recklessly throw themselves into a fire if only because at any moment the fuel might fail.

She loves him. Her fate was sealed the moment he looked into her eyes, and she would never be satisfied with an Elven love. She would rather be a shooting star, a flare of white brilliance into a cold black.

After all, his name is starlight.

“Close your eyes,” Kili says, “and hold out your hands.”

When she opens them, Tauriel finds a small folded square of cloth, a velvety thing redolent of antiquity.

“Open it,” he insists, all but bouncing with anxiety.

Inside the cloth is a small gold link, hexagonal, thick and sturdy, perhaps from a royal suit of mail. It gleams in the lamplight, shadows tasting the hand-hammered texture of its surface.

Kili can’t stay still any longer. “What are the beads in your hair?” he blurts, and then forges ahead: “I didn’t know if they were rank or family or some other association. Do Elves do that? When you had us locked up, I couldn’t tell. Everyone had different braids, some with beads, some without, and none with _beards_ -”

The beads. Small silver bands to keep her braids from unravelling, vain little things that were a gift from a friend two hundred years ago and more. “Decorative,” she says. “They exist for their beauty.”

“But do they _mean_ anything?”

“Beauty is in itself a purpose.”

“Just...pretty. Not for clan or- or status or-”

“I know you put great significance in such things,” she says, gently setting the link aside and taking his face in her hands. “Elves hold to no such meaning.”

His eyes search her features. “Truly?”

She has to ask. He’s offering her the opportunity and she has to ask. “What does this one signify?”

Kili bites his lip and squirms before taking a steadying, purposeful breath. “It’s a gift. From me.”

“Then I accept it with gratitude.”

“It’s a gift from me,” he repeats. “An offering. I-I know this isn’t proper, that we’ve yet to convince Thorin and then my _mother_ , and contracts and I don’t know how Elves do these things. But none of that makes this less heartfelt,” he adds quickly, color rising to his cheeks.

Heat blooms in her chest and it is suddenly difficult to breathe. In an official engagement, Elves exchange silver rings and wear them proudly. Is it the same with Dwarves and beads? Her mind spins. “Yes,” she stammers. “Yes, of course. I accept it.”

The grin that splits his face could rival the sun, and then he’s babbling again. “It’s not what you deserve, but-”

“I would,” Tauriel says fiercely, “wear any token or any ornament if it means we are bound.”

Despite his own general disregard for his hair, his fingers are firm and deft in her own. “There,” he says, tucking the last strands in place. “Your hair is so bright. It’s barely noticeable.”

She reaches up and touches it, tucked deep into the braid at the back of her crown and still warm from his touch. It suddenly feels impossibly intimate, such a tiny, hidden thing, a significance known only to the two of them. “We do not need great declarations,” she says, turning to face him. 

“I declare it all the same.”

Her mouth finds his in the lantern light. A promise-kiss, deep and sweet, and then sliding into something even sweeter. He pulls her into his lap and oh, she’s wanted this. The world narrows to his skin beneath her fingertips, burning under the edge of his collar and seeking deeper. His hands tangle in her hair, the muscles of his shoulders and back sliding under his tunic as she holds him. 

“How do Elves wed?” he asks, his breath hot on her neck.

“Two parties declare their intent.” Her fingers slip into his sleeve, tracing the line of his bicep from his elbow. “They exchange silver rings.”

“Easily enough,” he murmurs. 

“That is only the betrothal. A great feast will be thrown, bringing both families together.”

“Tell me there’s ale.”

“Perhaps not enough for Dwarven taste.”

“Some Dwarves have very...exotic taste.” He kisses the underline of her jaw. “A feast. What then?”

“Then a year will pass, or more.”

“Such a long time.”

“Indeed.”

“And when this great expanse of time has ended?”

“Another feast.”

“Of course.”

“The couple exchanges gold rings and their families bless them.”

“Ah, a blessing.” He shifts. “And what do they say?”

Something inside her stutters. “I...do not know.”

He pulls back, his thumbs going to draw soft circles at her cheekbones. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

She leans forward and captures his apology in her mouth. When his eyes slide closed, she whispers, “How is it among Dwarves?”

“Contracts,” he murmurs. “Months of negotiation.”

“Such a long time.”

“It’s ridiculous, it really is.” He swallows, and she can feel the lines of his throat move against her lips. “There is an...expedited way.”

She hums. 

“I don’t know how it is for Elves, but if we...are together...that’s as much a marriage as any with a thousand feasts.” His face assembles the look of laconic indifference that she knows is a wall for deeper feeling. "My mother will pitch a fit. She’d say it was-”

She looks at him fondly. “Reckless.”

He grins. “Yeah.”

“My people share the same belief about such things. A union of any form-”

“ _Any_ form-

“-is a union all the same.”

His hazel eyes glow in the flickering light like two smoldering coals. “Tell me, Tauriel, _amrâlimê_ ,” he says quietly, “I will be yours if you will be mine.”

This is everything she’s ever hoped for, what she’s ached for from the day when first she saw him. She leans forward and whispers into his mouth, “ _Gilith_ , I am already yours.”

Tears suddenly glimmer amid the heat in his eyes, and then his face splits into a white-toothed grin, more bright and beautiful than any star in the sky. He takes her face in his hands and kisses her as if savoring the rarest wine. “I love you,” he whispers. “I have loved you from the moment I met you.”

He had joked once that there was an enchantment on the runestone, a curse forever laid upon those who read the runes. In all these weeks after, she is not certain he was wrong. She knew nothing of true desire until that moment, nothing of the obsession and yes, the greed, that has come to consume her. If this can be named greed, if greed is the word for a wild, racing heart and the sudden phosphor-bright flare of a being coming alive after centuries of sleep, then greedy she is and greedy shall she be forever. 

“Yes?” he asks, his eyes gone wide and dark as coals. The heat in his voice eclipses dragonfire, the promise of immolation heavy on his breath. 

“Yes,” she breathes, capturing his hand as it drifts along the line of her hip and holding it in place. “Yes.” 

The bedroom is almost dark, a single lantern turned low on the bedside table. For a long moment, they simply lie as two bodies entwined, too enthralled to do anything more than map the curves of the other. He hangs over her like the moon, lips brushing her eyelids, her nose, her chin, to drift further down her jaw and the length of her throat. 

As one, they rise and he circles around to kneel behind her, his mouth hot on the nape of her neck as his knuckles brush the top of her bodice, running down the lacing as if it were her naked spine. “ _Amrâlimê_ , I am your servant. Tell me if-”

This is happening. This isn’t a dream. This is real, a gift greater than all the treasures of the world. She reaches back to palm the back of his head, drawing her hair away to give him better access. “You will never do anything I do not desire myself.”

His breath shudders against her skin. 

A sudden, sharp knock on the door cleaves the room in two. It seems unreal, a moment frozen in crystal. “Kili? I’m coming in.”

Fili. 

White panic. “Let him see,” Kili hisses. “I don’t care-”

“It will not help us,” she hisses back, leaping to her feet, quickly straightening her skirt and combing her fingers through her hair. Kili hops toward the door, tugging on the front of his trousers in an attempt to settle them in a less obvious position. 

When Fili opens the door, he finds them casually arranged at the table, the perfect picture of congeniality. 

* * *

He looks first to Kili, then to Tauriel, and back to his brother with narrowed eyes. “I should not be interrupting anything.”

“No,” Kili says, shifting in his seat and masterfully keeping a cheerful tone. “We were discussing the logistics of the feast.”

Fili looks dubious. “And what logistics are those?”

“I want Tauriel seated with us. If she is not, I refuse to go.”

After a beat of silence, Fili grabs another chair and joins them. “Yes.”

Kili blinks. “Yes?”

With a shrug, Fili leans back and kicks his feet onto the edge of his brother’s chair, which Kili tries in vain to shove away, ending up perched on the far edge of the seat and glowering at the offense. “It would do much good to have an Elf among us,” Fili says, as if the scuffle was entirely beneath his notice. “Dale is rebuilding. Balin is adamant trade with the Woodland Realm will resume. Perhaps it’s best that our Iron Hills kin see what that looks like from the day of their arrival. ”

Something spasms in Tauriel’s heart. “Is this true?” If trade is to be resumed, if Thranduil opens his borders, there might exist the smallest chance- 

“Not _yet_ , but they don’t need to know that.”

Her disappointment must show because Fili shifts to meet her gaze. “It will come. We are well into the drawing of contracts with the Men of Dale. When that is done, we will make an agreement with your people. I know we will.” 

“I do not trust Thorin with such things,” Kili mutters, but Fili swats at his arm. 

“I am not Thorin. And you are not. Balin is quite certain it can be done.” His eyes flicker shut for a moment, his face suddenly wan and far much older than his years. “Brother, please. I cannot do this without you, and you cannot poison our chances with such doubt.” Opening them again, he swings his boots from Kili’s chair to the ground with a solid thump, leaning forward to put his elbows on the table. “I know you’re angry. “

“ _You_ should be angry-”

“And to what purpose?” His fist comes down, frustration thick on his brow. “I am his heir. Perhaps you can afford your anger, but I cannot. I _cannot_. If I do not make my peace, we all suffer. The barest _hint_ of conflict between us makes our entire line look weak, and I already have a handicap. I need you by my side.”

“So I should just swallow it back?”

“You know that’s not what I’m asking.” More quietly, he adds, “You carry anger for both of us. Please do not let it consume you.”

The golden heir, stooped under the weight of a crown not yet his. Fili looks so spare. In the weeks since the Elven healers brought him from the brink of death, he is conscious, but not truly recovered. His beard and thick clothes hide a frame too thin, his habit of leaning casually against tables and doorways a clever compensation for limbs shaking with exhaustion. Kili darts and laughs with full strength, his bow and his sword the natural extensions of his body as they ever were. Fili expends himself holding numbers and letters in his mind even as they slip away, tracking conversations he cannot wholly follow, struggling with words he once spoke with ease. Every bit of effort goes into focusing his mind, with none left over for body or spirit. 

Tauriel hasn’t realized the extent until now. Perhaps he hasn’t _shown_ her until now. 

There is more discussion, some small argument that has nothing to do with the subject at hand. As he rises to leave, Fili gives Tauriel an expectant look and reluctantly, she follows him to the door. 

This is not what she wants. When she turns back to say goodnight, she sees in Kili’s eyes the same dark frustration, the same unfulfilled want, the ache for simple company and the ache for more. 

He put a golden link in her hair and the taste of him is still on her lips. She raises a hand to smooth an imaginary wayward strand. He understands immediately and although nothing is said, she feels a heady glow between them nonetheless.


	11. Chapter 11

“Kili thinks I am learning to count,” Fili admits as they sit together on the battlement. A fierce storm swaddles the mountain, icy rain freezing upon contact and turning everything to shining glass. They are, for the moment, under an overhang, stone pillars blocking the worst of the wind, with a brazier between them that does little to combat the cold. It’s a miserable day but somehow, by silent agreement, here they remain. 

Tauriel tucks herself more deeply into her cloak and waits for him to continue.

“I’ve just memorized the sounds. How many fingers? Five.” He holds up a hand, but doesn’t tick off the numbers. “One, two, three, four, five. But the words mean nothing. If there’s meaning behind them, it’s beyond my grasp.”

“It has been a bare month since you woke,” she says gently. “‘It will come, I promise.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Consider these things day by day. Recovery is not linear.”

He looks down at the offending hand, clenching it into a series of fists. “How long did it take you?”

“Many years.” At his despairing look, she quickly adds, “but we are different, you and I. Elves may be quick to recover, but it takes much more to injure a Dwarf. Had one of my people taken the blow you did, they would not have lived beyond the next breath.”

He snorts. “Forgive me if I do not find that comforting.”

“It is truth, nothing more.”

With a heavy sigh, Fili drops his elbows to his knees, head sinking into his palms as if it outweighs the mountain itself. “I’m so tired.” The words are barely a whisper and when he turns his face to look at her, his eyes shine with nascent tears. “How is it that you are my only confidante?”

Tauriel has no answer for that. He protects Kili in mind and body, circling around his brother in a constant, unconscious defense. She has seen it. He will die before he burdens Kili with this, and because he will not burden Kili, he cannot burden anyone else. 

“Tomorrow, we deliver the final contract to Dale,” he finally says, clearing his throat and scrubbing at his eyes. “Will you come?”

Dale. In her memory, a heavy winter sun pours atop the creamy stone like sweet coulis, but even that is caught in a haze of pain and the confusion of waking. From a frivolous standpoint, if the market has somehow recovered, she might like a few small things. She came to Erebor with nothing but the clothes she wore and the daggers she carried. Even though Kili has heaped upon her combs and robes and other necessities he thinks she might need, all recovered from Erebor’s vast, musty stores, despite herself, Tauriel’s vanity insists the heavy tunics might be altered.

If she can find a seamstress, she can bring her own supplies and pay good coin for the work. Once, she could go to Echadrion and let his keen eye select material and ornament, masterworks forming under his careful needle with stern confidence. Occasionally, he would rebuke her for a torn hem or sleeve, but when she came to collect the garment, she would find the repair invisible and the section seamlessly reinforced.

She has other clothes, she thinks, tunics and kirtles in suede and linen, slippers of the softest leather and tooled with a thousand tiny leaves. Perhaps she could ask for them.

“We go in an official delegation,” Fili says. “You cannot join us in any diplomatic capacity, but Kili isn’t the only one who sees you so alone.”

“I am not alone,” Tauriel counters.

“It will do well for your color.” He heaves himself to his feet. “If you are to be my sister, indulge me.”

When he couches it in those terms, she cannot bear to resist.

* * *

The day dawns pale and frozen. The storm passed sometime in the night and its retreat seems to have sucked every drop of moisture from the air. The valley is encased in crystal, ground that hasn’t yet recovered from battle holding small pools like white mirrors, broken reeds and the bare sticks of ruined trees turned to delicate, jewelled stems.

They set out just after sunrise: Thorin and some of his company, a larger company of their Iron Hills cousins and several wagons filled with things from Erebor’s depths: weapons, tools, crafted metalwork like buttons and clasps, fabrics and furs centuries-old but still serviceable. Heavy spiked wheels keep the wagons from sliding on the icy road and cleats on Dwarven boots do the same. 

“How have you not fallen?” Fili asks incredulously, eyeing Tauriel’s own boots.

“Elves,” Kili says, smug, and turns to offer her a besotted grin.

A few paces ahead of them, Thorin gives an audible huff.

The river is held still in twisting blue ribbons, tracing the route where it once flowed free. As the sun ascends, the scene turns sharp, a thousand fierce pin-pricks like stars come to cling and glitter across the landscape. Tauriel has not returned to the valley since Legolas brought her to the gates of Erebor and her eyes sting with the brilliance of it all. She is surrounded by fragments of light, shards of light, clinging drops of light that collect on her eyelashes like dazzling tears. 

Dale thrusts itself out of the ground, ruined towers gilded with the morning. Memories float like motes of dust: trolls hurling chunks of the great walls as if they were no more than a child’s blocks, streets so thick with fallen bodies she had to close her heart and nimbly dance through.

Thranduil, flecked with Orc ichor, the tip of his sword drawing a single drop of blood at her throat. 

Tauriel betrayed her people here. Whatever else this city may be, whatever it may come to be, that reminder will be etched on every stone. 

Beside her, Kili follows the path of a raven through the sky with a smile that is so open and unselfconscious that her chest aches. What happened in this city, what consequences have been brought upon her and what ones are still to be leveraged, she made her choice. She traded everything for this man’s smile and knows she won the better end of the bargain. 

* * *

Their convoy is met at the gates with great celebration, not the least of which is directed to the wagons. A more formal reception will happen in the King’s Palace and Thorin, his nephews, Balin, and Dwalin all adjust their cloaks and start up the wide, winding boulevard to the city’s great hilltop crest. 

Tauriel will not go with them. She takes her knapsack of clothes from one of the wagons, settling the leather strap easily on her shoulder. At the last moment, Kili darts back to take her hands up in his. “I will find you later,” he promises. In his face she sees everything he doesn’t say: that he’s upset she’s being set aside, that whatever simmering anger he feels toward his uncle has risen up to burn in the back of his throat.

“I will be fine,” she assures him. “Be steady. Be careful.”

There is no levity in his eyes. “I know.”

“Kili,” Thorin calls, his voice accepting no argument. “Come.”

So she watches them walk away, the man she loves sneaking one last glance back to wink at her as he goes. 

Left alone, Tauriel wanders. Dwarven gold hangs heavy in her pocket, her bundle of clothes heavy on her back as she tries to focus on the people, not the crumbling walls around them. With surprise, she notes a number of Elven merchants in the market square. Every single one of them recognizes her with wide-eyed shock, and then immediately turns away and refuses to meet her gaze. 

She wants to stride up and demand service, to drop her money pouch on the table and insist upon their wares, but when she takes a step toward the nearest one, he looks at her with a revulsion so complete she might have been an Orc.

It’s so unexpected and so shockingly strong that it hits her like a physical force. Prickly heat surges into her face and ears. She is outcast. She had thought perhaps that Dale was neutral territory, but by all evidence, it is not. 

She drew an arrow at her king. If her betrayal had ended at her flight beyond Mirkwood’s borders, perhaps this would be different, but what she did was unforgivable. The worst is that standing here, pinned by the censure of people she once knew as kin, she still does not regret a single action. 

If she were repentant, she might be allowed a small bit of grace. Instead, she is here in the company of the King Under the Mountain, flaunting her betrayal by her mere presence. 

The worst part is that she can’t even be angry. She understands the consequences of her actions. She has no self-righteousness to proclaim, no desire to stand in defiance. She’s done what she’s done because she fell in love. She’s furious at Thranduil’s inability to see beyond his own borders, but once, Tauriel was the Captain of the Guard and would have looked upon such a betrayal as her own with equally scornful eyes. 

A cry splits through the crowd and suddenly, a blur of blue and gold hurls itself at her with almost Elven speed. “Tauriel!”

“ _Tilda_.” Instinctively, Tauriel’s arms tighten around the girl, a wave of affection and, yes, relief crashing over her. 

Tilda takes a huge breath. “We wanted to see you when you were sick but Da said we should stay out of the way and then you were gone and didn’t say goodbye and Da said that was the way of it but _Sigrid_ said you’d return and we hoped and _hoped-_ ”

Sigrid herself comes forward, slightly out of breath from chasing after her sister. Tauriel extends an arm and then the older girl is also clinging to her. It is so _good_ to see them, so good to feel their warmth against her own and to see them safe and well. If she were petty, it would be deeply satisfying to observe the Elven merchants’ unease at the welcome, but in this moment, all that she feels is gratitude as she hugs the girls close. 

“We didn’t know you were coming!” Sigrid says into her neck. “Da’s meeting with the Dwarves today, but we had no idea you’d come too!”

When they finally pull away, Tauriel looks them over with a critical eye, finding no evidence of injury or hurt in either of their bright faces. “You look well.”

“We thought you were going to die,” Tilda moans. “We came to visit but the other Elves wouldn’t let us in and we tried to tell them about the plant you used on Kili but they said they knew.”

“They were gracious,” Tauriel says. “I am recovered.”

“They were rude.”

“Tilda!” Sigrid breaks in, color blooming in her pale cheeks. To Tauriel, she says, “Forgive us. We had no place there. We only wanted to help.”

Tauriel reaches out to put a hand on Tilda’s cheek. “You meant well. I am sure they understood the sentiment.” Swallowing hard, she adds, “Forgive me for not saying farewell.”

Tilda frowns. “Where did you go?”

“Erebor.” How can she explain the all-consuming need, a soul-deep starvation that drove her to stumble before Erebor’s doors barely beyond ruin herself? 

The girl perks up. “Did you find Mr. Kili?”

“I did, and he is well. He is here with Fili and Thorin Oakenshield to finalize the trade agreement with your father.”

Now it’s Sigrid’s turn to all but wilt with relief. “I didn’t know they were signing it today. Da has been so busy, we barely see him or Bain.”

“Dwarf contracts are no small business,” Tauriel agrees. She thinks of Fili, of the hard set of his jaw and his tired, bleak stare. The Men of Dale are eager for partnership; she cannot even guess at how difficult and protracted a negotiation with the Woodland Realm will be.

“You will come for supper, won’t you?” Sigrid says hopefully. “Do you have a place to stay for the night? Please stay with us.”

It’s such a painful contrast, the welcome of the girls and the scorn of the Elves. Always a foundling, she thinks to herself, taken in and dependent upon the kindness of others. “I would like that very much.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shopping episode!

As soon as the girls discover her reasons for being in the marketplace, Sigrid and Tilda haul Tauriel down a side street. The facade of the building is broken, ice and snow collected in the collapsed roof, but the lowest floor is intact enough for a small shop. Dale is still in the grip of winter, but someone has dug cold-season reeds from the riverbank and carefully put them in a large, chipped planter outside the door. 

“Sigrid! Tilda!” The woman inside stiffly rises from her chair, a delighted smile creasing her worn features. “How good to see you girls. And-” Her eyes widen and she ducks an awkward little bow. “Ah, Lady Elf. I bid you welcome to my humble shop.”

“This is Tauriel,” Tilda says without preamble. “I told you about her. She killed all the Orcs and healed Mr. Kili and saved us from the dragon.”

The old woman’s smile cautiously returns. “Then we are in her debt.”

“This is Unne,” Sigrid says, going and kissing her cheek. “She’s our da’s aunt. She can help us.”

It takes little time to outline what Tauriel needs. Unne does not ask about the Elven merchants nor why Tauriel would choose not to patronize one of her own kind. When Tauriel reveals her bundle, the old woman clicks her tongue. “Now that’s a pretty bunch, no lie. Old, for certain, but not so gone it can’t be worked. I’m not one for frippery,” she warns. “What I make is sturdy and simple. If you’re looking for lace and bobs, you’ll have better luck elsewhere.”

“Sturdy and simple are all I ask.”

“Aye, that I can deliver.” She takes the first tunic from the bundle and thrusts it forward. “Pop this on and let me take your measurements.” And then, when it’s settled on Tauriel’s shoulders: “Bless me, you were right to come. This isn’t a shirt, it’s a sack with arms.”

Tilda hops up on the counter, kicking her legs while keeping up a steady stream of chatter. Sigrid occasionally interjects a question or comment, and for a few hours, Tauriel forgets being outcast, forgets being shunned, forgets the tension inside the halls of Erebor and the ache of Kili’s absence. The girls are warm and effervescent, and Tauriel lets herself dissolve. Once, Tilda reaches over to show her a little carven horse she’s acquired and when Tauriel unthinkingly bends to see it, Unne peevishly swats her hip. “Don’t _move_. You’ll upset the pins.”

Everyone freezes, the room going silent. Finally, Unne says haltingly, “Ah, meant no insult, Lady Tauriel-”

She’s an Elf again, a strange creature in a city of Men, held distant and cold. “Tauriel, please,” she says. “And you were in the right. I promise to keep still.”

Tension slowly bleeds from the room. “Are you a princess?” Tilda asks. 

“A soldier, but no longer.”

“Why? Is that how you could kill the Orcs?”

“Yes,” she says simply. “And my life has taken a different path. That is all.”

Sigrid looks thoughtful. “Are you a representative to the Dwarves?” 

“I am a guest in their halls, nothing more. I would be a poor negotiator.”

She’s about to ask Tauriel another question when Tilda breaks in. “Will you teach me magic?”

“Unless you have Elven blood, such things cannot be taught.”

“Aunt Unne, do we have Elven blood?”

“I should think not,” the old woman mutters around a mouthful of pins. “Now, lady- ah, Tauriel. How long do you like your skirts?”

* * *

Tauriel comes away empty-handed, the bundle given over to Unne’s skilled hands, feeling apprehensive and oddly homeless. Such a frivolous moment of vanity, these clothes, but the Dwarven style sits awkwardly on her body and reminds her of all that she’s lost.

Unne counts Tauriel’s coin with a sharp eye. “Half up front, half on delivery. That’s the way it’s always been and that’s the way it will always be. These are easy enough to do. Come back tomorrow evening and you’ll be set.” 

The day is sliding towards sunset, curls of frost unfurling in shadows and corners as the world turns to copper. Sigrid and Tilda each take an arm and walk her around the city, pointing out ongoing repairs and plans not yet begun until the sadness disappears, and all Tauriel can see are the hopeful lanterns glowing in windows against the oncoming dark. 

She hasn’t realized how truly _lonely_ she’s been, now that Sigrid’s hand is tucked in her elbow and Tilda’s cold little fingers twine around her own. She loves Kili and would trade her last breath for a moment in his bright presence, but the energy that surrounds her in Erebor binds like spider silk. She never notices until she’s under the sky. 

The girls have not been idle. Both of them have thrown themselves into the recovery. Tilda cheerfully details her work at what has become the main clinic, rolling bandages and chopping herbs. Sigrid has assumed a more administrative role, shadowing the healers and taking careful notes of what is needed and what is already on-hand.

“You were invaluable help to me,” Tauriel tells them honestly, remembering how Tilda held herself stiff and still as Tauriel prepared the athelas, and how both of them hadn’t hesitated to throw themselves on Kili’s legs to hold him down. 

She can’t suppress a shiver, his scream echoing through her bones.

They come to the King’s Palace, and Sigrid tugs her past the main entrance. “There’s a side door we’ve been using,” she says, and admits, “I don’t like all the attention.”

Tauriel understands. 

They eat in a large kitchen, at a table tucked in a corner away from the bustle of a larger feast. It’s so simple, so...honest. Their father might have been declared Lord of Dale, but a month and more ago, their home had been a cozy little room with sleeping-cubbies on one end and a tiny hearth at the other. 

“Sleep with us?” Tilda asks, and Tauriel does, wrapping herself around the girls in a bed large enough for twice their number, buried in a mound of blankets and furs, and deeply, deeply content. 

* * *

The next day passes too quickly. Tauriel lets herself be led through the city, content to let the girls take over and take her where they want. After a simple breakfast, they go to the clinic and spend a few hours assisting where they can. 

“What was done before, I cannot do again,” Tauriel warns, heart in her throat, but time has passed enough since the destruction of Lake-town and her kin have come through with stronger magic and more confident hands. The only patients are winter illnesses and pregnant women, but she still quails with anxiety at the door. 

Tilda holds up a list. “We can go find these!”

So they crisscross the city, stopping at various herbalists to see if any of this root was recovered or that mushroom found in the hills. They end up in the main market, Tilda cheerfully skipping between vendors that she seems to be very familiar with, every one greeting her with warmth and delight. Sigrid is more reserved, quietly and firmly bargaining for sewing pins and woven reed baskets. The girls fill Tauriel’s arms and together, they drop their bounty off at the clinic and go in search of lunch.

They buy steaming rolls stuffed with cabbage and fish from a scarred and friendly cart owner, and go sit on one of the high balconies overlooking the lower city. In the endless blue sky overhead, wispy stripes like freshly-carded wool announce a change in the weather. “I can’t wait for spring,” Sigrid says wistfully, tucking her cabbage roll to her chest. “It feels like it’s been forever.” 

Tauriel thinks of green, of the southern parts of Mirkwood that almost certainly have declared their intent to blossom. She loves the way the forest comes awake, first in tiny sprouts and then a great flood of life that claims every log and stone as its birthright. What will the valley look like? What of Erebor? Does the dragon-breath slag stay cold and dark, or do tiny mosses stretch their arms up to the sun? Will the bright lichens she saw in pursuit of the Orcs have survived the ice?

They must. Erebor is, above all, the natural home of all things sturdy and tenacious. The Elves may endure, but the Dwarves plant their feet and carve away a mountain’s heart, fashioning with their bare hands primeval rock into soaring pillars and mighty avenues.

Tilda kicks one foot up to inspect her shoe. “Tauriel, when do you have to go back to Mirkwood?”

“I am staying with the Dwarves, for a time,” she says. 

“Oh,” says Tilda, and that’s it. No judgement, no shame, no frown of disapproval or sneer of disgust. “Will you come visit us more?”

“I will,” Tauriel says, and means it with every beat of her heart.

* * *

They collect her clothes as the sun edges toward the horizon. It’s no Elven garment, but Unne has somehow taken a shapeless Dwarven tunic and turned it into something that is loose and comfortable but still faithfully follows the lines of Tauriel’s body. The fabric taken from the sides has been added to make a practical skirt and for a moment, she can only give a little twirl, watching it bloom around her. 

“No mirrors here,” the old woman announces. “Got melted by the dragon. But perhaps the girls will tell you how it looks.”

Tilda immediately claps her hands, breathless with approval. Sigrid takes her time, walking a full circle before running a tentative finger along the quilted embroidery at Tauriel’s shoulders. “I like how you kept this,” she tells her great-aunt. “Makes it fancier than just a shirt.”

“Whoever did that stitching knew their needle,” Unne says with satisfaction. “Wouldn’t have thought Dwarves could make a design with no curves look so delicate, but we’re all here to learn.” She takes another tunic - sleeveless, with laces at the sides - and pulls it over Tauriel’s head, tugging it into place with a practiced hand. “Lace this up as you like. It’ll give you more of a woman’s shape and an extra layer for the cold. Do you even get cold?”

Tauriel blinks.

“Meant no offense. I’ve just seen your people wearing things the rest of us would freeze in.”

“This will suit well, thank you.”

The final payment is gratefully given and just as gratefully received. “Dwarven clothes on an Elf-maid.” Unne shakes her head. “Never thought to see such a thing, much less have it done by my own hand, but that’s the future coming for us, now that the Mountain-King’s in his rightful place.” She grins up at Tauriel, a tooth shining black in the lamplight. “Take care of my girls and come back as you can.”

Tauriel and the girls start the walk back to the King’s Palace, perched as it is at the very top of the great hill. As the streets twist and steepen, Tilda lags a little behind and Tauriel hefts her onto her back. “I believe we’ve set foot on every cobble in Dale.”

“Not _all_ of them,” Tilda protests.

“Every single one. I counted.” At the girl’s incredulous glance, Tauriel adds sagely, “Elves know such things.”

Sigrid tries to hide a smile, but something in her expression tells Tauriel she herself is a little unsure of the jest. 

She loves these children of Men. How strange it is that mere weeks ago, she had been content with her little life in Mirkwood, killing spiders by day and stealing away to watch the stars by night. She knew Elves and hated Orcs. She had not been present when the Dwarves were driven out of Erebor and heard of them only in Thranduil’s wrath. Now, she walks through a city once abandoned, with a child on her back, another striding beside her, and a handsome Dwarf glowing like an ember in her chest. 


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day! I'm grateful for your existence and yes, that means you.

The contract has been signed with as much fanfare as a wounded city can muster. When Tauriel and the girls come back to the palace, their brother Bain is waiting for them. He offers Tauriel a manful greeting, and then hugs her as tightly as his sisters. “The Dwarves say they’ll be staying another night. I didn’t know the Elves were here, too.”

“I came with the Dwarves,” Tauriel says. 

“You should have been there, then!”

“I am…” An attachment? An intruder? “...a guest. It was not my place.”

“Will you stay with us again,” Tilda asks, and at Tauriel’s simple nod, lights up with a shining grin that is so reminiscent of Kili her heart gives a shudder. 

Sigrid fusses with Bain’s collar. “How is Da?”

“Busy,” the boy says, finally shrugging away from her hands. “He wants all of us to come to dinner tonight.” A glance at Tauriel: “I guess that also means you.”

She wants to. She wants to sit in a room bursting with commemoration, however meager the actual fare. She wants to watch the Dwarves’ faces turn pink with wine and their laughter rise up into the thick, wooden beams, mingling with the cobwebs until not a stone is left untouched by sound. There is nothing that restrains a Dwarf, happiness, fury and grief all expressed without shame, and Kili, a scion of the royal line, brilliant and beautiful, is the loudest of them all.

Tauriel cannot ever return to the calm civility of her own kin. Even on feast nights, even when Thranduil blesses his kingdom with sweet Dorwinian, not even the most joyous is a pale fraction compared to the simplest Dwarven repast. There is a deep acknowledgement to it, an honest, heartfelt celebration of food and company. 

She has no place among them. Even if she were not outcast, even if she were there by Thorin’s explicit welcome, she has no place or purpose in an official delegation. “No,” she demurs, putting a hand to Tilda’s cheek to forestall a cry of protest. “I am not a negotiator. I will content myself elsewhere.”

And she does. In some ways, it’s a bittersweet gift, an evening of solitude to walk or explore as she likes. There’s a sense of being untethered, of floating anchorless on an unseen lake. Cooking smells rise on thin curls of smoke. Everywhere Tauriel has looked, the people of Dale seem to be fed and clothed - Elven donations or Erebor’s dusty stores, she knows not - but a pervasive sense of grief hangs in the air like mist. They lost everything to the dragon: livelihoods, homes, families, anything they could possibly hold dear. 

They are so very much like the Dwarves, and even Tauriel herself shares a memory of such trauma in her bones. A surge of anger as searing as a winter tempest flares in her throat, so sudden and raw it sparks tears in her eyes. Thranduil has helped the Lake-men, grudging as she’s certain it is. As for herself, there must have been no few Elves affected by the calamity she doesn’t remember - farmers perhaps, smiths and merchants, ordinary, good-hearted folk who loved their land and loved their children - but no one has ever spoken of them. As far as she knows, she was plucked from her wounded obscurity on an unknown whim. Perhaps she was an example of his benevolence. The Dwarves received no such treatment, all because there was once an argument over some gems. 

Thranduil is as he chooses to be. The might and substance of Mirkwood lie at his command, from the fell and withered spider-glens to the bastions of sweet birdsong and verdant leaves. If he were to forego a season’s consumption of wine, he could sponsor Dale’s reconstruction in full. 

_Are we not part of this world?_ she’d once demanded of Legolas, her heart frantic for something she would not understand until she stood, frozen in horror, as Kili thrashed at her feet.

No, not even then. Every day brings more understanding, like a Dwarven mine spiraling deeper and deeper into the earth. She will never love him less than she does at this moment, and with each sunrise she will love him more. Perhaps that’s how she’ll endure the centuries to come, by becoming a being of pure love, discarding any messy physical structure to subsist instead on memory alone. 

When the city fires burn low and streets empty, Tauriel makes her way back to the King’s Palace. She’s about to find an unobtrusive place to rest when she encounters Sigrid in the hall, looking well-fed and sleepy. “There you are,” the girl says. “Tilda wants you to stay with us again. She made me go look for you.”

“Forgive me,” Tauriel says. “The night is so beautiful.”

The celebration was a success, if restrained. It was not the occasion to be raucous; that will come later, when stores aren’t so lean and the grief so fresh. She wants to find Kili. She hasn’t seen him since they parted in the market yesterday morning and his absence gnaws with sharp, urgent teeth, but he is with his kin being princely. She stands away, their affection kept secret like the ring of mail hidden in her hair. 

As soon as Tauriel joins them under the covers, Tilda burrows into her shoulder, a tiny little furnace whose hair smells faintly of Dwarven tobacco. 

Elves and Men may mingle their bloodlines. The song of Beren and Luthien says it to be true. Could an Elf and a Dwarf not do the same? Perhaps there has already been such a union in the Ages since Arda was formed, but Tauriel is no scholar and a tale of that nature would certainly be forbidden in Thranduil’s halls. Still, she has a vague understanding of history. Elves and Men had the same creator, given to the world to be its caretakers. Dwarves were born from living stone, formed from stone and obsessed with its every shape and size. 

No. However they came to be, Dwarves seek beauty the same as any of the Firstborn. Greed and resentment fester in all the peoples of Middle-Earth, but so do love, pride and hope. She has never seen a light such as Kili’s in the eyes of any of her people. 

* * *

She rises in the early hours of the morning, when the moon has gone down but the first blush of dawn is still hidden beyond the horizon. Tilda makes a small noise until Tauriel whispers, “All is well,” and tucks the blankets up around the girl’s chin. “Sleep.”

The great house is silent, the city still asleep, but she finds Kili sitting on the shallow tile roof above the balcony that wraps around the upper story, staring out over the valley with smoke curling lazily from his pipe. 

Wrapping her cloak more tightly around herself, she lightly pulls herself up to sit by his side. “Strange to find you awake at this hour.”

“I was waiting for you.”

“Truly?”

“I am always waiting,” he says. “I tried to find you earlier but you’d already gone to bed.”

“I was not certain my presence was welcome.”

“You are _always_ welcome.” He exhales and together, they watch it dissipate. “I do admit it was easier to ask where a tall, fire-haired Elf had gone.”

“Easier?”

“When I said I was looking for my betrothed, everyone seemed a bit confused.”

Alarm claws at her throat. “You jest.”

He affects a tragic air, obviously pleased with himself. “I thought you accepted.”

The key and the keyhole. “Perhaps they simply wondered which one.”

“ _Amrâlimê_ ,” he says, putting a hand to his heart. “It is you and no other.”

They sit together in perfect companionship, her shoulder against his, his knee against her thigh. The scent of tobacco hangs sweet in her mouth, the notion that she now holds something within her that was once within him a tender little thrill, even if it is just simple air. They have not touched in a full day, haven’t truly held each other since the night he gave her the link of mail. She should want to envelop him, to whisper into the great shell of his ear all that she wishes to do, but there’s a strange tension to him that gives her pause. “You came to the rooftop for more than honeyed words.”

He takes a deep inhale. “I...find myself dreaming. Taking a walk helps.”

“What kind of dreams?”

“Ones I’d like not to have.” 

Somewhere, a rooster complains to his hens, and far across the valley, the echoed cry of a fox shivers through the air. 

“I will listen, if you wish to speak,” Tauriel offers. 

He leans his head back, a caricature of languid ease, the smile that comes to his lips holding no humor behind it. “I shout, sometimes. It’s very dramatic.” More somberly: “In my own rooms, it’s of little consequence, and I’m grateful for the space. Tonight, Fili gave me a good kick before I disturbed the others.”

“What do you say?”

“I never know.” He turns back to the valley and the lake beyond, chewing at his pipe as his eyes go flat and distant as the water. “Sometimes Fili’s name. Sometimes just ‘no’. I come awake drenched and cold as if I slept in a river, my heart racing like I’m at the height of battle.” He scrubs at his face, as if whatever he sees can somehow be simply scoured away. “Thorin says it will pass. It must.”

Tauriel’s heart lodges in her throat. This is about Ravenhill. The certainty of it burns like the certainty of her love. She cannot push him, she cannot hurt him, but somehow, the question condenses in the cold, damp air, as soft and quiet as a cloud. “Will you tell me how it happened?”

Silence hangs between them, dense and impenetrable, for so long she thinks she’s made a grave mistake. Finally, Kili takes a breath. “We were sent to investigate the towers. Fili...found himself surrounded. It could have been me. It _should_ have been me.” He swallows. “One moment, I was in a hallway below, the next...I saw him falling, as if in a dream from a great distance, and then he was before me on the ground, bleeding, nothing left in his eyes...just...blank.” His face crumples in on itself and for a long moment, he sits with his fists clenched to his forehead, trembling behind a curtain of his own shaggy hair. “And I saw you,” he rasps, “so soon after Fili, so motionless, your hair like blood in the snow. I _knew_ it was the last time I would see you. I knew it in my heart. I think- I think I was empty. I felt nothing. I had nothing left. When I saw Thorin run through...I remember charging across the ice and it breaking beneath me. I remember lashing out as Azog held me down. Dwalin tells me I took enough of Azog’s attention to let Thorin deal the final blow, but I do not remember beyond that.”

“They told me you told Legolas where to look.”

“Perhaps I did.” He shakes his head. “It was days later that I heard you had been taken to Dale and had even the smallest chance at life. I would have gone, _amrâlimê_ , I would have gone at an instant had Fili not been lying there, so still. I could not leave him. If he were to die, he would have me by his side. I could not choose between you. Every moment was agony. 

“Tauriel, I didn’t know what it was to fear. I told you on the lake that I wasn’t afraid, but I didn’t know what fear meant. I cannot put into _words_ that moment I saw Fili fall. I will never unsee it. I will never be able to look at his face and forget that moment. And now- I am so afraid of what I can lose. I lost it - you, Fili, Thorin - and by all the luck in the world somehow you are all still here. That loss haunts me. I _cannot_ go through that again.” He looks up at her with tears in his beard and lower lip fighting so hard in his teeth the tissue goes white. “I’m not that strong, Tauriel. I am not that strong.

“And _you_ , you say so easily how you will endure after I pass into my fathers’ halls. I cannot fathom your grief. It terrifies me that you so willingly embrace what I have already seen. I cannot doubt you, I _cannot_ , but either you will not feel the grief the way I have, or you will and I will be its cause.”

She wants to take him in her arms, but somehow, she can’t move. “Legolas would have had me follow him,” she says quietly, her face numb and distant. “He is the son of my king and I should have followed him in pursuit of the Orcs, but I could not. I followed you and I follow you still. I have no regret for any of it.”

“What do we do?” he whispers. “You and I, what do we do? In a simple world, I would offer my heart and my home and beg you to accept. Instead, I am a son of Durin, brother to a king-in-waiting, and even if he did not need my aid, I would still be willingly bound to his service. I would make you a princess, Tauriel. I will not have you stand in the shadows and hide yourself for me.”

“I have no lineage,” she says. “I have no kin, no connections, nothing to bring to you but my love, which you already have. I cannot be an emissary from my people. I cannot give you children.”

“No kin at all? But what of Legolas?” Once, she had seen the two she loves most in this world appraising each other with suspicious eyes. How is it that they’ve come to a sort of understanding, that Legolas delivered her to Erebor despite his sorrow and grave misgivings, and Kili sits here now with Legolas’s name in his mouth with desperate concern.

She had told Fili that she would lay her past at Kili’s feet at her own pace, and though she doesn’t want to, though it hurts to recall such things and hurts more to speak of things now forgotten, there will never be a better time. There is never a good time for such things, but the wounds are open. If there is to be any true healing, all that is festering must be brought to light and washed away.

So she tells him. She tells him what she remembers, and what she doesn’t. She speaks softly, steadily, and somehow, her voice keeps calm. She tells of the fire, the damp blanket, of screaming and screaming for someone that never came. 

“Your parents?” he asks quietly.

“Perhaps.” She has never let herself speculate. “Perhaps not.”

She tells of being in the healing halls, of concerned nurses and caregivers, of being locked inside herself so wholly even the urge to speak had been lost. When she speaks of Legolas, something in Kili’s face goes soft with understanding.

“You were injured,” he says. “And you recovered. Fili-”

“I have told him. I told him, too, that I cannot promise truth where only hope exists. But I do have hope.”

Kili abruptly tilts backward, sprawling with one arm behind his head, staring up at the stars. “Tauriel.” His voice is plaintive with exhaustion. “Will you tell me about stars? Tell me about the memory. Tell me what makes them so precious and pure.”

So she does, stretching out to lie beside him, their shoulders just touching in the dark.

* * *

When the tension bleeds from his body and his breathing goes slow and even, Tauriel tucks herself against him and lets his warmth seep into bones. She aches for sleep, too, but how would it be if they were found together like this in the morning, curled under her cloak and dusted with frost?

Why _can’t_ they? She will sleep better by his side, and he by hers. Such an unfair thing, to be denied this simple comfort. They can heal each other, wrap themselves around each other like salve, and she could kiss him awake if he stirs and kiss him back into unworried dreams. She thinks of the golden link in her hair, small and sturdy, put there by his hand and known only to the two of them. 

“ _Gilith_ ,” she murmurs into his ear. “Go back to bed.”

He throws an arm over her. “No.”

“You know we must.”

It takes no small amount of struggle, but he finally hefts himself to one elbow, sleep-clumsy, his other hand reaching over to trail along her ear and down the long line of her throat. “What if we didn’t?”

She has a sudden vision of laying him back right here on the rooftop, out of sight of everyone save the stars, and drawing away his tunic so his skin pimples in the cold. She would put her mouth to his chest, warming him with her breath, the cadence of his heartbeat steady against her lips. 

How many times has she imagined this? Dreamed of this, coming awake bright with fever and starving for his touch? The two of them together, drunk with want, his face as he watches her clothes come away, and his face again when she arches over him, claiming him, surrounding him, the night as silent witness. 

She says nothing, and his defeated sigh breaks her heart.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! We were right in the middle of the PNW ice storm and our power was out for six days, but we weathered it well. I'm incredibly grateful to get back to normal and eager to get back to the usual posting schedule.

The day after the trade agreement with Dale is settled, the first arrivals from the Iron Hills come through Erebor’s great entrance. Tauriel isn’t exactly _hiding_ , but she keeps herself away from the crush as carefully as she can. 

What a strange person that she’s become. As the captain of Thranduil’s guard, she would never hesitate to insert herself in a situation if she thought it necessary. She was only ever truly reserved in the presence of the Elvenking, and even then she skirted the dangerous edge of impudence. 

Now, she’s outcast, banished beyond Mirkwood and made homeless by actions too bold to condone - actions she herself is shocked to have taken - and too vital to regret. She abandoned all sense and caution when she threw herself after Kili. In fleeting moments, she takes him in her arms, his mouth hot and eager against her own until they’re shaking and breathless with frustration, but otherwise, her entire being rings with anxiety like a poorly-struck shield. She could lose him. He could be taken away from her, barred from her presence, and though she knows in the hollow part of her chest that he would rush to her side, the only sorrow worse than missing him would be taking him away from his kin. 

There is an allure to that notion, if she holds it in her mind like the runestone in her palm. If it were nothing to walk away, if there were no consequences, they could go into the wild and make their way as best they could. Every day, they’d walk together, and spend every night wrapped so deeply around each other that their hearts would share a single beat. He would be hers and she would be his, uncomplicated and pure.

Instead, Tauriel lurks in Erebor like a faded thing, choosing instead to take her arrows over the glacier and hunt whatever meat can be found. The rooms she’s been given open into a busy, wide avenue, and she slinks to and from, pierced by Dwarven stares both curious and resentful.

She hears the muttering: “A she-Elf! So tall. Such long hair, but beardless as a fish. What kind of creature goes without a beard?”

“I hear they can’t grow them.”

A snort of disgust. “Unnatural.”

And then, because Dwarves hold gossip as a sacred art: “Perhaps the prince cannot be blamed - surely she snared him with some foul Elven magics.”

“He has too little hair himself.”

Laughter, moving away down the corridor. 

For herself, she can endure. She can lock herself in her rooms and scream into her fists, and the stone obligingly swallows the sound. Kili, on the other hand - Kili can be damaged. Kili stands beside Fili who stands beside Thorin, and in the eyes of their naysayers, associating with an Elf wounds the kingship as deeply as Thorin had surrendered to Thranduil himself. 

Tauriel voices her fears only once, trapped by Kili on a secluded balcony. “It means _nothing_ ,” he says fiercely, gripping her hands across his heart. “Let them talk. We belong together. You _know_ this.”

She wants his confidence. She wants to stand with her shoulders back and claim her place by his side. Perhaps that would even be better: an irrevocable alliance, iron-clad and unassailable. Dwarves value loyalty even above gold. Should they not value hers?

It’s a poor argument. She’s an Elf. There is nothing more to be said on the matter. Thorin walked in consultation with the Hobbit before he departed, yet Bilbo Baggins was a pleasant oddity, his forthright demeanor not just accepted, but warmly welcomed. 

Elves are known for their vigor, but Tauriel finds it exhausting. After the incident during the Orc fight, even though the mere consideration that it was a Dwarven, not Orcish, blade that found its mark is nothing less than raving madness, a suspicion she must never, ever voice, she’s still found herself stiff and alert. 

In this moment, though, she lets Kili draw her into a kiss, his lips firm and certain against her own, the taste of him filling her mouth and burning through the doubt in her mind. 

* * *

With the influx of kin from the Iron Hills also comes great supplies of food and other perishables long absent from Erebor’s great larders. Huge barrels of beer, great bottles of wine, meats both salted and fresh, sturdy vegetables and other Dwarven delicacies are put out to a feast so deliriously joyful the merriment echoes from the deepest tunnel to the valley outside. Fires blaze in huge braziers, music from a hundred different instruments adding to the cacophony of celebration. Tables are scavenged from every apartment, chairs strewn where floorspace can be found. Tiny bearded children scream and run to relatives as families are reunited. Babies lately born meet their fathers and much crying is done by both. Tears and laughter mingle freely with the ale. 

Kili sets his solid boots firmly against the floor with the invitation of blood in his eyes, refusing to even make an appearance unless Tauriel is by his side, and it’s only when Fili intercedes on his brother’s behalf that Thorin throws up his hands and walks away. It is not a victory: even having succeeded in his campaign, Kili radiates impotent fury, glowering at Thorin’s back. It takes a severe word from Fili in Khuzdul to snap him back, but the anger still lingers as he arranges his face to be pleasant. 

“You _cannot_ antagonize him!” Fili says sharply. “Where is your head?”

“My head is right here,” Kili retorts, “as is my _heart_ , and I resent being continually forced to choose between the two!”

Tauriel almost doesn’t want to attend, if this is how the night is to progress. She’s wearing her new Dwarven-style tunic and overdress, and when he first saw her, Kili’s eyes had gone wide and hungry in a way that made her want to steal him back to her room and take them off, an incandescent celebration of their own. Even Fili had offered a smile of genuine approval at the outfit, and she counts that as a precious, precious gift. 

And yet. There’s a strange unease about the night, something akin to suspecting a spider’s path, the beast concealed but not wholly absent from her senses. She tells herself it’s the noise, the stares, her perfect isolation as she stands in a crowd of people who do not like her and do not want her there.

Sometimes, she thinks she should never have come to Erebor. She should have stayed in Dale and then journeyed elsewhere, far south or far west, seeking out employment as a hired sword. Kili would grieve, of course, but he would be safe, unmolested, reveling in the unwavering support of his kin.

All of that is a lie. She could no sooner leave him than she could excise her heart from her chest, and she knows that if she left, if she disappeared, he would expend himself to his last breath in search of her. 

At her arrival, Balin had told her it was not an easy path that she takes and she’d agreed. She gave up everything to be here and here will she stay. The world would be dark and meaningless without her starlight. 

* * *

So she enters at his side, her stance, gait and expression as polite and inoffensive as possible. As they pass through the celebration, conversations stop. Mouths full of food forget to chew. Kili becomes so aggressively charming it almost frightens her. 

“This is Tauriel,” he says to table after table, grasping arms and slapping shoulders, grinning so widely every single tooth gleams in the firelight, as effervescent as a young prince at a party could ever be. “She joined us in the final assault. She is a guest in these halls.” 

Tauriel smiles, bows, accepting small greetings and returning her own. Children come to cautiously touch her hair, her ears, shrinking back in shocked glee at her height when she stands. Some mothers quickly pull them away, but others eye her Dwarven clothing and Kili’s broad enthusiasm and allow their offspring to proceed. She is honestly just as fascinated by the little ones’ beards and wins hearts by exclaiming over their length or density.

Everyone offers them mugs, which Kili eagerly slugs back. When plied herself, Tauriel without hesitation does the same. Color blooms on his cheeks and nose, a genuine sparkle coming to his eyes. Compared to a good Dorwinian, even the sharpest beer is barely stronger than water, but eventually warmth spreads into her belly and the cold anxiety becomes no more than a distant concern.

“This is going so well,” Kili says to her, the words floating around the lip of his mug so no one else can hear. “I honestly don’t know why Thorin worries.”

“It is by your hand.” She can’t help watching the way the torches catch the flecks of gold in his eyes like stars. “You shine so brightly, _gilith_.”

“Some day, we will walk through these halls as husband and wife.”

“Hush!”

“And if I do not?” An enticing heat kindles in his voice. He raises the mug to someone as they pass, clanking it so hard against theirs half the beer drenches his arm. It is a flawless performance of someone wholly dedicated to the wellbeing of his newfound kin. Again, against the rim: “What will you do then?”

Incorrigible. Beloved. 

* * *

Eventually, Fili - a paragon of royalty, every braid and smile perfect, the wariness around his eyes only detectable because Tauriel knows to look - hails them to a table of their own, a long wooden piece as large and imposing as the gates of Erebor itself. Thorin and Dain are in deep conversation with one of the Iron Hills women, who, based on her matching jewelry and lingering hands, is clearly his wife, imposing and broad as her husband and no less loud. 

Balin offers Tauriel a refill and a smile. “How do you fare, lass? I would imagine this is a bit different than any event in the Woodland Realm.”

“It is.” It might be the ale, or Kili’s dark hair, or finally being among folk to whom she is not so completely a stranger, but she finds herself almost giddy. “There is so much more _life_.”

The old Dwarf laughs, pleased. “I’ll drink to that.”

Kili shoves a plate of food at her, bread, meat, and dense, aromatic cheese, and immediately attacks his own. Fili throws a chestnut at him, an excellent shot that causes a yelp. “You know what Mother says.”

“Mother isn’t _here_.”

“If you choke to death, she’ll blame _me_.”

“What about killing me with your terrible aim?” The chestnut is whipped back across the table.

Fili neatly ducks and behind him, there’s a startled _whoop_ that sets both princes howling with mirth. “I never miss.”

“You hit my ear!”

“ _I never miss_.”

Chestnuts fly in either direction. Tauriel can only lean out of the fray, a joy she’s never felt filling her to her core. 

“Now, that’s a welcome sight,” Balin murmurs at her side, his eyes gone misty. “We came so close to losing them, and now, in _Erebor_ …” He reaches over to give her fingers a quick, decisive squeeze. “Thorin will come around. You have earned your place here, make no mistake.”

She can blame her own tears on laughter, but the kindness in his face is her true undoing. 

* * *

As the party stretches out, parents and caretakers collect their little ones and take them off to bed, leaving a dedicated contingent of revelers that redouble their efforts. Well into his cups, Kili starts to crawl over the table to thoughtlessly kiss her in front of everyone when Fili grabs his collar and hauls him upright. “Drinks!” the heir announces, overloud and with an exuberance not entirely due to the ale. “We need more drinks!” His brother, entirely due to the ale, agrees with great enthusiasm and the two of them dive into the crowd, mugs held aloft. 

Tauriel stays where she sits, leaning back in her chair and deeply, deeply happy.

* * *

At the end of the night, Tauriel and Fili haul the well-celebrated Kili home, an unsteady trio plagued by giggles. There’s a drinking song she’s just learned, one that the brothers know by heart and although what might be a melody keeps changing, the gusto does not.

“I,” says Kili, stopping mid-chorus, his head flopping toward her, “love you. So much.”

Fili clamps one big hand on his brother’s mouth. “Let’s keep it quiet, shall we?”

“I-”

“ _Stop shouting!_ ”

Abruptly, Kili whirls on him, hissing, “You’re just like Thorin-”

“Don’t be a fool-”

“We are all here together,” Tauriel breaks in, perhaps too brightly. “That alone is worth the grandest celebration.” She is caught in the lassitude of drink, her mouth eager to say things she dares not utter, not even in front of Fili. Unable to stop, she leans into Kili’s ear, as bold as she dares, whispering, “I wear your gift in my hair, _gilith_ , do I not?”

His anger disappears as instantly as a flash of falling star, replaced with a dopey smile that, despite herself, she finds entirely endearing. 

Fili rolls his eyes, still feeling the sting of Kili’s accusation. “I am not your opponent,” he mutters. “If the axe comes down on your head, it will have already hit mine.”

When they arrive at the ornate palace entrance, Tauriel stays at the bottom of the stairs, watching the brothers lean on each other as they stagger home. At the top, Kili turns around, his face utterly bewildered. “Are you not coming?”

“She lives elsewhere,” Fili says. “You’ll see her tomorrow.”

“She could stay with us.”

Tauriel makes herself laugh, a light, soft sound at odds with the sudden ache in her chest. “I will see you tomorrow.” When he looks unconvinced, she motions with a flick of her fingers. “Go. Morning will come sooner if you sleep.”

That seems to make sense. He nods, but as they enter the tall doors, she hears him say to Fili, “I’m going to _marry_ her. Did you know that?”

“Halfwit.” Fili gives him a solid little shake. “How could I not?”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tag addition: suicidal ideation. 
> 
> Practice self-care, lovelies. Hold space for your feelings and nurture yourself in whatever way works best.

The anger between Elves and Dwarves runs deep and strong. Thranduil may have gained his gems, and Thorin may have reclaimed Erebor, but warriors in these halls still carry fresh wounds from Elven weapons, the blood spilled serving as fuel to their resentment. Tauriel, tall and thin, naked-faced, her hair largely undecorated, is an easy symbol and an easy target.

Still, Kili’s gale-force charisma at the feast seems to have made the smallest impact: for an entire day, Tauriel does not catch a stray elbow in a crowded hall or a muttered curse in Khuzdul. 

She wants to be with Kili. That is all. She wants a simple life, walking beside him and sleeping in his arms. She came to Erebor because he is here, and if he were anywhere else, she would go there instead.

Every morning she rises, she wakes with a fresh anger at Thranduil. Even if the gems were stolen, what of it? Is such a crime worthy of genocide? She knows the stories. She has heard them told with icy frankness, fables of Dwarven greed that painted the Elves as blameless and innocent. When Thranduil recounts the desolation of Smaug, he is always on the ridge, always with his army, turning his kin back to safety as the Dwarves reaped the fruits of their misdeeds. 

People _burned_. Lake-town burned. _Tauriel_ has burned. The longer she lingers here, the more she can feel it, those long-ago wounds rising beneath her skin. Her body hasn’t changed, but more than once, after a particularly unquiet night, she’s taken a lantern and searched, certain that there will be scars and feeling little reassurance when she finds herself pale and unbroken. 

Perhaps it is the memory of helplessness, of being powerless in a great maelstrom and desperately grasping at something she can never touch. Thranduil has recounted his battles with the great serpents of the north, sweeping heroisms that always ended with victory and the rebuke that to leave the boundaries of Mirkwood was to risk death.

For so many centuries, her purpose was to keep the forest safe. Somehow, despite the silence on the matter, she’d understood that Orcs had been involved in her past and there was no greater thrill than slicing through fetid flesh when a pack got too close. She’d loved killing spiders, the wet crunch as a perfect arrow punched through tough carapace. Dwarves were dismissed as a nuisance, nothing more. If Thranduil spoke of them at all, it was with the greatest distaste. 

Now, she walks through mountain halls and just sees people. The atmosphere is different - loud, messy, chaotic - but the business of living continues the same as any Elven community. There are tailors and blacksmiths, toymakers and children, teachers and healers. Tauriel isn’t welcome here, but she cannot accept that these people’s ancestors deserved their fate. 

* * *

A routine is established: Tauriel goes with trade convoys to Dale, stays until goods have been exchanged, and returns to Erebor. She spends time with the Lord of Dale’s children, Bain a noticeable bit taller each time. Sigrid, her cornflower eyes careful and keen, is now never without a thick, leather-bound tome, taking notes and taking inventory of everything she sees. Tilda, boundless enthusiasm and a boundless heart, darting from her beloved clinic to the market, pulls Tauriel from place to place and task to task as if the both of them were no heavier than dandelion fluff. 

It feels like a different life, here in Dale and out from under Erebor’s solid bulk. Wind twists through the streets, stealing breath and turning fingers numb even through the thickest mittens, but the sunlight falls on their shoulders like a sweet promise. 

“How old are you?” Tilda asks once, arms full of jewel-bright kale that she is currently refusing to let Tauriel carry. 

“Six hundred and forty-three.”

The girl looks aghast. “That’s so _old!_ ”

“Young for an Elf.” Something occurs to her. “How old are you?”

“Twelve,” Tilda says, drawing herself up and shifting her grasp on the kale. “And Bain is fifteen and Sigrid is seventeen.”

Tauriel’s instinct is to disbelieve it. _So_ young. She has no idea how quickly children of Men age, but even Tilda seems older than Tauriel was when she came into Thranduil’s care.

“How old do Elves get?”

“Old,” says Tauriel.

“But _how_ old?”

“How old is the world?”

Tilda regards her with narrowed eyes. “You’re making fun of me.”

“Truly,” Tauriel says. “Thousands of years.”

“Then what’s the oldest an Elf’s ever gotten?”

Tauriel has no answer to that, and the longer she’s among Dwarves and Men, the more she has to explain about herself and her kin, the more she wishes she’d been less concerned with killing spiders and more concerned with scholarly pursuits. “The Elvenking is at least five thousand,” she says, leaning in as if it’s the greatest secret, and Tilda’s eyes light up.

“Does that make you a child?”

“No, not for a long time.”

“Where are your parents?”

“Lost,” Tauriel makes herself say, and quickly catches a fallen kale leaf, its stem a rich spear of ruby in the dreary afternoon. “We should hurry before the rain returns.”

* * *

Kili joins her as often as he can, but Fili, a true son of Durin and uncompromising as heavy iron, will die before he admits weakness and Kili is the only one who can finesse support. There are jokes and banter between them, but as the winter passes, Tauriel watches the good humor stretch thin. It may be that Thorin sees Fili and thinks he understands his heir’s intent, that strength is born from struggle, but having come to know his nephews and standing in fear of his wrath, Tauriel herself only sees blind ambition and a fanatical determination to bring his sister-sons into their inheritance. If he truly understood, if he looked upon his nephews with honest clarity, if he met them with sympathy, she is certain that Fili would not be so deeply, silently miserable.

“I wonder if I can live like this,” Fili tells her once on the battlements, his voice flat and bleak as the gray sky above. A late snow is falling, light and delicate, feathering his eyelashes and the bleached straw of his hair. “I have stood here so many times, wondering if I have the courage to jump.” There’s a sudden burr in his voice. “This began with a fall. Why shouldn’t a fall end it?”

An Elf’s body is not so tied to their spirit. An Elf as damaged as Fili would have died on Ravenhill, but with the hope that Mandos might grant them a second existence. She has no idea what afterlife the Dwarves look for, but they are mortal. They exist in their bodies a single time and they cling to that existence. She doesn’t fear death for herself and had never thought of it as something ugly and final until Kili. Now, the fragility of mortals terrifies her, and the thought of a being willingly giving up the rest of their short, precious time is so foreign and shocking, she doesn’t even know how to react. 

And this is _Fili_ , golden, dedicated, his heart huge and quiet. She remembers that first night in Lake-town, in the aftermath of healing, of being exhausted and sitting apart, watching as the brothers quietly conversed. There had been nothing between them, no barriers, no distance. Fili gave his entire attention to Kili’s recovery without hesitation, perhaps even without thought. He deserves to be cared for in return, to have his kin draw close to love and attend him. It should not fall entirely to Kili, desperately dedicated though he is. Fili should be able to turn to Thorin for comfort and advice, to steady him when he falters. Tauriel loves him both as an extension of Kili and as his own man, but there is an unspoken knowledge that they three make a lamentable company.

She wants to tell Fili to have faith, but he looks so tired, so defeated and lost, she can’t offer him such platitudes. There was a dark afternoon weeks ago when she and he and Kili sat here and she put her palms to Fili’s temples, letting herself sink beneath his skin to search for anything she could pull together, any ragged edges that might be sealed, something, _anything_ that might help. Instead, there’s an emptiness, the space between heartbeats, an empty jar on a shelf. Her talent is thin at best, but she doesn’t know if a more powerful healer might find something, or if, like a severed limb, this is beyond Elvish medicine entirely. 

None of them talk about that afternoon.

“You’re going to tell me it takes time,” he says bitterly. “What if this is how I am? What if I never recover?” He shakes his head. “Uncle is adamant I be by his side, but I can’t see the future he envisions for our people if I’m too busy pretending to make sense of scratches on a page.” 

Her heart aches and on impulse, she reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder. She has barely ever touched him beyond attempts to heal and any comfort feels oddly indecent, but Fili heaves a sigh and gives her fingers a brief, grateful squeeze before she retreats. 

When he turns back to her, there’s a hint of grief about his lips. “How is it that you’re an Elf? Why can’t you be some Dwarf-maid from a strong clan, someone Uncle could embrace and welcome into our family?”

“I cannot seem to find an elixir for beard growth.”

He laughs at that, a noise that startles them both. “That is a thing I would love to see.” He adds, “I’m gratified to see my brother is finally looking like a proper Dwarf.”

“I see children with such thick hair,” Tauriel says hesitantly. “I had thought he was just young, yet...”

“No,” Fili says. “Mother told us once that it’s an old mourning custom. Thorin is a king in exile. When Kili heard that story, that very night he came in with his entire head hacked bald.” He chuckles. “Mother was furious. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so angry. She yelled at Kili, then dragged Thorin in to yell at _him_. As you can see, my brother has his hair back, shaggy as a pony, but he is nothing if not loyal. He declared we wouldn’t see him with a beard himself until Thorin reclaimed the throne.”

“And here he is.”

“Knowing him, it will be enormous.” He gives her a sidelong glance. “Dwarves find beards very attractive, you know.”

“Then I thank you for your warning and will prepare my defense against all rivals,” she says, and is rewarded with a tiny, tentative grin. 

* * *

There comes a day when the rain starts, and it doesn’t stop. Twice, a pack of Orcs is seen along Erebor’s flanks and twice Tauriel goes out with her bow and her daggers and slices through them. To her shameful relief, the company changes now, the foul-tempered Glath and his kin stepping aside in favor of a different cadre of prickly old warriors. She stays well away from their blades and comes away unscathed, her daggers wet with blood and her heart soaring.

Goblins are reported in the lower mines. Tauriel swallows her anxiety and descends into the depths with Kili at her side. The current party is a handful of fresh-faced young ones, barely out of adolescence, who regard her with terrified fascination and follow Kili as if he were Durin the Deathless himself. Her beloved rises to the occasion with grand stories and his most impressive swordwork, but as the younger ones speed off to announce their success to parents and mentors, she sees his heart was never in it.

“They don’t know anything.” He heaves a sigh and looks up at her, face pinched in a way that only deepens the gash across his face. “We once looked at Thorin that way. It feels like a lifetime ago.”

She reaches down and runs a thumb over the eyebrow bisected by the scar. “With luck, they will never have to know.”

Kili leans into her touch, eyes sliding closed. They have not truly seen each other in a double handful of days, and he looks ragged. Once, they had an entire mountain of corners in which to embrace, but the influx from the Iron Hills means there are suspicious eyes in every direction. In this brief moment, they are alone in an anteroom, having delivered the youths out of the mine but not yet made their own way. 

Tauriel kisses him, more for comfort than out of hunger, and pulls his head to her chest, pressing her face into his hair. “It’s almost spring,” she says. “I saw a crocus in Dale.”

She can’t see his smile, but somehow, she can feel it. 

* * *

Time has a different pace for Elves. In the past, she would have noted the passing of the seasons only as the forest told her. An afternoon on a riverbank, trailing her feet in the water, might stretch out forever, while a month of chasing spiders might be as ephemeral as a single breath. 

Tauriel doesn’t have the luxury of that right now. She has a finite number of days with Kili and she is desperate to hoard it down to the last hour. The passage of time is constant and inexorable. If she lets her thoughts linger, a wild energy rises in her body with no outlet and no recourse. Every moment they aren’t together is a further amputation of something deep and precious.

The valley turns first to wet and then to mud. Great swaths of river ice break away, water pouring down from the glacier in roaring torrents. The river itself swells, churning dirty foam and scouring away winter debris. Tools of war unearth themselves, bodies lost and frozen after the battle now gone turgid and swept down into the lake below. 

The land is healing itself, Tauriel thinks. There will always be artifacts here, signs of destruction that will never truly recover, but soon grass and scrub will cover them up like a proper scab. 

Ice will be melting in Mirkwood, too, crocus tentatively pushing up through the damp earth to spread purple and white under budding trees. As the sun warms the branches, birds will return to hide their urgent offspring in nests crafted in holes and hollows. She is far, far away from all of that, but even amid the dragon-blasted desolation of Erebor, she can see the slow awakening of umber and sienna lichen, the greening of mosses gone dormant. 

Spring. 

Tauriel has now been banished for four months. She left her home - abandoned her home, _betrayed_ her home - in the last days of autumn. How fitting, perhaps, that she left Mirkwood as it tucked itself away. She hadn’t known it would be the last time. All she’d known was that her prisoners escaped and Thranduil had offered clemency to an Orc. The roil of passion was still new in her chest, the thundering anxiety a bare shiver to her senses. What she felt was fresh and strange. Every step took her further along a path she could never have predicted, and each step has led her to where she stands now, shadowed on a high balcony overlooking one of Erebor’s vast halls as a city of Dwarves brings itself to life. She likes to be elevated. It gives her a sense of safety, a sense of control. 

If she lets herself consider it, it’s a reminder of Mirkwood’s dense canopies, branches thick enough to be paths themselves. 

Kili is beside her, a brief moment of connection in a long string of absent days. “ _Amrâlimê_.” He slides down the nearby wall to sit, stretching his legs out with a groan. “Tell me something good.”

“What if I show you instead?” 

He pretends to consider. “That depends. Is it good?”

“Very good,” she says, and settles above him with her knees straddling his hips. 

Immediately, his hands go to her waist, tugging her closer, his eyes gold with hunger. He carries such fatigue in his body that as soon as they touch, they both know despite hope, despite willing, wanting hearts, this will not progress. Still, he holds her as if they share nothing but skin and for a long time, they stay together that way, her hair falling around him like a curtain, and kiss and kiss and kiss.


	16. Chapter 16

Two things come to pass: a raven sent from the west announces the departure of the princess Dis and a host of her kin from the Blue Mountains, and the king of Dale offers to broker a contract between Erebor and the Elvenking. 

The three of them are in Fili’s apartment when the first news comes, Tauriel slowly running her pale whetstone over her daggers while the brothers puzzle out a handful of books spread across the table. Fili has given up the fiction he’s making any progress with the written word. He’s also had to admit to his true struggles with language in general: some days are better than others and although there have been fewer bad days as of late, if too many people talk at once, or if the speech is too fast or in a heavy accent, meaning slips away. If especially pressed or made self-conscious, his own words come like handfuls of water. 

“Uncle praises me for being thoughtful,” Fili confesses, his voice little more than a mumble. “I cannot bring myself to tell him.”

Kili, perched on the table beside him, clenches his jaw. “You should have told _me._ ”

“What was I going to say?”

“You could have had me get rid of the books!”

Fili’s fist comes down on the table. “How else should I recover? You were right when you said to start as a child would.” Kili opens his mouth, but he forestalls any commentary with a shake of his head. “Neither of us knew it would be such a waste.”

“It is _not_ a waste-”

“Then _why hasn’t it worked?_ ” Fili flings himself to his feet. “It’s supposed to _work_! I’m supposed to make progress! These are children’s primers-” he sweeps his arm across the table, dashing them to the floor with such violence that Tauriel starts- “so why can’t I read them? I am not a child!” With a hard tremble of tears: “I _cannot_ be.”

With great control, he sits back down, breathing as if he’s run to Dale and back in a single sprint, one hand pinched hard between his eyes. 

“So the books are out,” Kili says gamely. “We tried that. We move on to something else.”

“What else is there?”

“You have never given up on me,” Kili says fiercely. “You will _not_ give up on yourself.”

“Fine.” All the fight drops from him. “Tell me what I should do.”

“When do you not understand me when I speak?”

“Kili, I understand you perfectly. You’re my brother.” Without looking up, he waves a hand at Tauriel. “And...you. You speak so clearly. Slowly.”

“You are without a doubt the first to call me slow,” she says, earning a tiny huff of what might be distantly related to amusement.

“See?” Kili turns a smug grin to his brother. “She belongs here.”

Fili doesn’t bother to respond.

But evil cannot fester where sunlight is cast, and now that all has been laid bare, forward movement can begin. In addition to Khuzdul, the Dwarves also have a system of signs kept secret from outsiders. So long as he’s not expected to count on his fingers, Fili doesn’t seem to have any more impairment than he does with speaking, and the brothers begin crafting with grim determination a shorthand that will allow Kili to read to him unheard and all but unseen. 

Tauriel intends to slip away and let them work, but the moment she rises, both brothers turn and look at her in consternation. 

“Where are you going?” Kili asks.

“I have no way to contribute-”

“Please stay,” Fili says quietly. “If only to...keep us company.”

She cannot refuse, and so sits in comfortable companionship, offering a kind word or small bit of humor to ease frustration when it arises. 

As they work deep into the evening, Thorin appears in the door almost silently, a huge, imposing presence that is one moment absent and the next filling the room. He doesn’t even acknowledge Tauriel, saying to his nephews simply, “Our people from the Blue Mountains have taken to the road. We will see them before spring’s end.”

He’s gone as abruptly as he came. 

“ _Mother_ ,” Kili breathes, turning to Tauriel with shining, hopeful eyes, and Fili, strong, resolute, exhausted Fili, puts his head to the table and doesn't say anything at all. 

* * *

Tauriel doesn’t truly remember a time when she wasn’t a fighter. Legolas put a bow in her hands as soon as she was healed enough to hold it and together, they sharpened her aim along with her wits. Later, he put a pair of blades in her hands and gave her to one of the army’s training-masters. Standing beside the other soldiers, she learned how to wield them as an extension of her own body. Soon, she was a member of the Guard. She became the captain’s lieutenant, and then the captain herself. 

She was - not has been, not is - Captain of the Guard for almost three hundred years. Her daggers were a gift from Thranduil on her appointment. She served him with absolute faith until a certain dark-eyed Dwarf yelled for a blade. 

All of this to say: Tauriel isn’t a diplomat. She has barely ever conducted an interrogation. Those conversations were left to Legolas and the Elvenking himself, and if Tauriel’s presence was requested, it was only to stand ready if the prisoner tried to attack or flee. She has killed on command with ruthless certainty and felt only pride in her service. 

When Thorin demands she be brought before him, Tauriel’s stomach plummets. She shares a desperate look with Kili, heart pounding with uncertainty. This is not a moment of welcome. They both know it. Perhaps they haven’t been discreet enough. Perhaps the voices questioning her influence on the youngest prince have become too loud to ignore. Perhaps the King Under the Mountain is simply tired of seeing her face.

“The Lord of Dale has offered to broker an agreement with the kingdom of Mirkwood,” Thorin says without preamble. “If you do indeed favor my nephew, I would have you advise us during the negotiation.”

For a long moment, she’s too stunned to even draw breath. 

“Truly?” asks Kili. 

Thorin silences him with a quick, disapproving glance and turns back to Tauriel. “I offer this directly. If you desire to stay within these halls, you will stand with us and give insight when we ask it. I do not trust the _Elvenking_ ” - the title spat like a curse - “to hold to a contract no more than I would trust the dragon himself, but the Men of Dale have requested it and for their sake alone, I will consider.” He regards her, his eyes as gray and imposing as the mountain itself. “Well? What is your answer?”

“I am no negotiator,” she blurts out, hating herself even as the words are shaped. 

“Do you not know the King of Mirkwood?”

“Yes, I-”

“Do you not know his whims and proclivities?”

“I perhaps-”

“Then I ask again: will you continue residing within these halls?”

Tauriel can see Kili bristling in her periphery, and the way Fili has so tight a grip on his arm that every tendon and bone of his knuckles stands in sharp relief. 

Her list of betrayals is short but thorough: Thranduil ordered his borders closed and with full knowledge, she followed the Orcs down the river. When Legolas came to retrieve her, she instead went to Lake-town with him at her side. In Dale, she pointed an arrow at Thranduil’s throat and threatened a kinslaying. There is nothing else she could do that comes close, save for throwing open his palace gates for the forces of evil and setting them down to dinner. Thranduil makes no attempt to hide himself. Anything she could relate to the Dwarves is nothing they couldn’t easily discern for themselves. 

And in return, she would have permission to stay. It isn’t consent to wed Kili. It is little more than an allowance to walk freely and not slink from place to place, but anything is better than nothing. She has already become skilled in betrayal and if Kili is her reward, she will do it with a clear conscience and little guilt. 

“Yes,” Tauriel says, voice clear and shoulders back. “I offer myself however I may be useful.”

* * *

They cannot go to Kili’s rooms nor to her own, but if Tauriel takes her bow and blades and he his bow and sword, they can head out along one of the ridges as if simply going hunting. 

As soon as they’re out of sight of even the most keen-eyed of watchers, they tumble behind a rock outcropping and fall upon each other. “You,” he breathes, “are going to stay. I told you. He’s coming around.”

She’s already pushing aside his heavy jacket. “I will do _anything_ to keep you.” 

His mouth covers hers, his body hot and welcome even through the layers of winter clothes. After a brief, breathless assent, he tugs apart the buckles of her leather chestplate, and when his hands slide up her belly to cradle her breasts, she almost throws the rest of her clothes aside with it. 

They’ve been _so_ careful, which has meant nothing more adventurous than what can be quickly buttoned up or made utterly proper if they are discovered. After their interrupted betrothal night, there have been stolen moments of sweet kisses and far, far too few assignations that leave them both shaking with want. 

Once, they were tentative, almost shy, certain of their feelings but unprepared for the demand of their bodies. Now, there is far more confidence, coupled with the thrill of knowing the closer they push themselves, the harder it is to break apart. In the shadow of the rocks, amid ice and dragon-scorched gravel, under a frigid afternoon sky, the prospect of proving her worth to Thorin looming in the near future, Kili’s breath condenses on her skin, making her dizzy and bold. 

Her fingers make a slow journey under the hem of his tunic, eliciting a startled squeak as they brush against skin. She tries to pull back, alarmed, but he presses her hand to his stomach, holding it in place. “Your hands,” he chokes, “are _so_ cold.”

“Forgive me, I-”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t welcome.” His lips return to the space beneath her ear, his voice dark with heat. “I’m sure they might get warm somehow.”

With great pleasure, she obliges. 

His body is beautiful. She savors it, mapping the unseen contours of his hips and belly, noting the way every muscle quivers at her passage. One day, she’s going to lay him back and taste each tiny movement. She will _drink_ him in his entirety, naked and glorious, vulnerable down to the smallest part and a feast for her eyes. 

He’s slowly unlacing her bodice, tonguing a blistering trail down her neck. “ _Amrâlimê_ ,” he murmurs against her collarbone. “You are going to stay and be my wife and we will never separate.”

With a rush of courage, Tauriel moves her hand and Kili’s breath catches, his entire body going utterly still. There have been times they’ve pressed against each other, but never before involving tender skin. It becomes a tableau, eyes wide, his pulse racing at his throat, her fingers unmoving, not even daring to blink.

Finally, mouth dry, terrified that she’s presumed too much, she whispers, “ _Gilith_?”

It’s a long moment before he says faintly, “...I don’t know.”

She starts to move away, but his fingers are suddenly clenched around her wrist with bone-crushing force. A light dawns in his eyes, something new and wholly unknown, the warm hazel going to a deeper, stranger color, the intensity of an autumn sunset trapped in dark amber. “I did not,” he rasps, “say _no_.” 

Heat rises inside her, a forge coming to flame, and then his mouth is on hers, urgent and demanding. He works quickly at her bodice and when it falls open, her skin pimples more to his enraptured stare than from the cold. 

The beloved greed of the Dwarves.

She can feel the heat and power of his body radiating under her palm. If she slips her hand just a little lower, if she buries her fingers in the stiff curls, if she ventures down to the parts of him straining against his trousers-

At that moment, he drops his mouth to one of her breasts and all other sensation is utterly inconsequential. “That _sound_ ,” he breathes. “I want to hear you make it every day for the rest of my life.”

Every day. All day. She will give him everything he wants, and in turn take him for her own. There is nothing beyond the heat of his mouth and unrevealed potential waiting for her grasp. When she does finally touch him, when she brushes against his skin and feels the heartbeat pounding underneath, the shudder that passes through him is almost her undoing. 

But something suddenly changes. An awareness rises in them both, bright and awful. They are curled around each other, hungrily seeking intimate places, but this isn’t right. 

It shouldn’t be now. It shouldn’t be here. 

She wants him. She wants to wrap herself around him in every way possible and drain the tension from his body. For weeks, there hasn’t been a single night when she hasn’t dreamed of him and woken up squirming and empty. To say that she wants him is like saying she wants to breathe. It is beyond wanting. It is beyond control. 

This is a sacred act. It should be more than just desperate flesh. It shouldn’t be furtive, two people fumbling together with the full knowledge there is no family accord. She has no one to speak for her, and those who would speak for Kili have not been convinced of her worth. The two of them are already bound together and being together this way would cement that bond even further, but at what cost?

The spell is broken and cannot be recast. Hands retreat, clothes are fitted and smoothed into place. Not a word is said. They can’t even look at each other. 

* * *

They bring back three large geese and no one questions their absence. 


	17. Chapter 17

The moment on the mountain is like a sluice gate coming open, a river of pent-up force that is suddenly sent in its proper flow. She wants him and he wants her, but they deserve more than this. They _need_ more than this. If they were simply two people without care or consequence, it would be easy, but instead Kili is a prince of his people and Tauriel is an Elf, cast out from her homeland for the crimes she’s committed in his name. There are centuries of feud between their respective kin, continuing on to wounds less than half a year healed. None of it will be healed by the two of them stealing away. 

It isn’t perfect, of course. Tauriel will catch the smell of his skin as he walks past and clench her nails into her palms until her head clears. When Kili looks up at her across the table of books and papers they’re sharing with Fili, the lantern light will catch in his eyes and for a single breath, they are back on the mountain, a raw, amber desire taking hold.

Then it’s gone, tucked away as they’ve tucked themselves away. They are back to her first days in Erebor, where a brief touch felt like fire and a glance became more intimate than if she held him deep inside her, but somehow, there’s an undercurrent of jagged grief. Kili’s anger, always there, always lurking, now lingers just below the surface like a starving lake predator waiting for the slightest meal.

“Is everything well?” Fili finally asks, squinting suspiciously at the both of them. 

“Yes,” but the answer comes from two mouths at the same moment in the same tone, and Kili’s brother does not look convinced.

* * *

To say that Thorin has ignored Tauriel misses the true depth of his resentment. He has neither raised a sword against her nor driven her out of Erebor, but if he does deign to acknowledge her, his wordless judgement passes so harshly it knocks her breath away. There would be far less pain if he’d simply run her through. She saved Kili and held Fili fast as he slipped away, and on those facts alone she is tolerated. 

The sudden change leaves her reeling. When Tauriel agreed to advise the contract process with the Elvenking, she became a tool. She has been realized to have a use, some small modicum of value, and Thorin reserves nothing in defense of his kingdom. 

Instead of being disregarded, she is now included, made to attend long meetings and forced to watch Fili struggle with every sentence. 

For Kili, she will endure anything, but seeing how desperately Fili applies himself breaks her heart a thousand times over. She watches the other Dwarves at the table: Kili, his fingers fidgeting in the code he and his brother have devised and earning a series of increasingly-severe glances of disapproval from his uncle. He will go completely still, not even bothering to hide the defiance burning in his eyes, and then take back up with his signing as soon as Thorin looks away.

Balin knows about Fili. She has no doubt. His keen eyes glance across the brothers and he makes a point to repeat certain things as if to cement the meaning to himself. The businessman Gloin is only concerned with sums and figures, three Dwarves from the Iron Hills joining him with abacus and slate tablets. Dain, Lord of the Iron Hills, stands by his king’s side, and Thorin himself presides over it all with a gravity so stern and heavy the entire room seems filled solely by him, with all the rest of them mere afterthoughts.

Perhaps it is. 

“You,” Thorin says abruptly, thrusting a sheaf of paper at Tauriel. “We have found old records of grain harvests. Are these still accurate?”

She isn’t an accountant. Her concern for grain production begins with the first bite of fresh bread and ends at the last. She stares at the numbers written in crisp Westron and tries to make sense of it. 

Before the arrival of Smaug and the destruction of Dale, summer saw the valley golden with wheat and barley. Tauriel would sometimes go to the edge of the forest at night and watch the fields spread like liquid silver under a swollen moon. She had imagined that was how the ocean far to the west might be. It had felt somehow familiar, a dream not-quite-remembered, a sense of home that carried within itself a deep desire to walk away from the tree line and lay down amid the sweet stalks, and let the silken hush of the wind cover even her own heartbeat. 

“No,” she says. “Once, Dale might have supplied us all, but no longer.”

“Yet, trade does occur. I seem to recall a well-stocked wine cellar.”

The wine-cellar. For a single heartbeat, she’s watching the Dwarves speed down the river, and Kili along with them. She had thought then that she would never see him again, and yet here she is, in the same room, in _Erebor_ , selling everything she knows in exchange for a nebulous future. Not half a day prior, they had found themselves alone together for the first time in weeks, and kissed with such fever that patience almost lost to passion. She could never have imagined this.

Tauriel drags herself back to the present. “Dorwinion produces a vintage that is especially favored.”

“That trade goes through Lake-town.”

“Indeed. Many things are brought up the Celduin.” Trade _went_ through Lake-town. Now, that place is a watery graveyard marked with a forest of black and broken timbers. She allows herself the slightest glance at Kili and sees him seething. An agreement might have been established with Dale, but whatever was included, Thorin does not have his nephew’s forgiveness.

“What would Thranduil have to offer us?”

“That is not for me to know.”

“I am asking you.”

“I was charged by my king to maintain the forest boundaries and expel anything unwelcome. That has been my duty and I have done it faithfully since I came of age.” Tauriel tries to keep the frustration from her voice. She cannot antagonize him. She cannot show herself to be anything other than useful, but she has never stepped foot in a counting-house. If she has done inventory, it has been to count the quantity of arrows in her quiver or the bows in the Guard armory. “I can draw a map of how the spiders have encroached year after year. I can detail the dates and quantity of Orc parties I have brought to slaughter, but if I have needed something, it was provided already tallied. Forgive me.”

Thorin regards her, expressionless, his eyes flat and gray as the stone beneath her feet. “You cannot even hazard a guess.”

Despite herself, she shivers beneath his gaze. “No.”

A silence descends upon the room, filling it like a choking gas. Tauriel can’t look at Kili. She can’t look at anyone. She desperately wants to stare at the floor, but if Fili is holding himself like unbreakable steel, so must she. 

Finally, Thorin speaks. “Tell me the one thing he values above all else.”

“Gems,” Kili suddenly says, a frighteningly brittle calm about his voice. “White gems.”

His uncle grunts. “He has those. He will not get more.”

What other thing does Thranduil value above all else? He is vain, but Tauriel cannot imagine an exchange of adornments, not when the grass in the valley is growing thick feeding on last season’s bloodshed. The Dwarves have little to offer besides toymaking and smithcraft, and it will be the end of Arda before Thranduil would suffer any of his kin wearing Dwarven armor or wielding Dwarven weapons. Ore might be a possibility, raw materials for Elven smiths to turn into beautiful swords and sharp, precise arrowheads. Still, Thranduil is capricious, self-assured and utterly certain of his power: he needs no trinkets or baubles to secure his position. Any attempt against him is unthinkable and unforgivable-

 _Oh_. 

She has been thinking of physical objects, but Thranduil has seen entire Ages rise and fall. Yes, the White Gems of Lasgalen have been cited as the cause of the feud, but it wasn’t the gems themselves: it was the accused theft, a broken accord, the betrayal of agreement. The Elvenking may have brought his soldiers to Erebor in search of treasure, but it was because the treasure was _owed_. Is that not what Thranduil has pontificated all these centuries? The greed of the Dwarves, their false hearts and the justly-deserved ruin they brought down on themselves?

“Loyalty,” Tauriel says. “Above all else, he values loyalty.”

“ _Loyalty_?” Thorin all but spits in disgust. “He knows nothing of that.” His eyes come up to spear her, pinning her in place as if she were a head on a pike, set as an example to his enemies. Perhaps she is. “An Elf does not walk who I would call loyal.”

It comes like a slap in the face. She has given up everything to be here. Her fate is tied to Kili’s, intertwined as deeply as if they shared a single skin. Every action, every _breath_ is taken in his service. She sacrificed her home, her comforts, every connection and everything she’s loved, her own _body_ for Kili’s benefit and the only reward she will accept is all of him in return. She is here at this table without complaint. Should she not get even the smallest acknowledgement?

But Thorin isn’t _wrong_. Betrayal is the new hallmark of who she is, the defining act that segmented her fate. Among those of her kin alive during the First Age, there is a running suspicion that red hair precedes treachery and despite herself, she has proven them right. 

Strange. She hadn’t thought of that until now.

Kili has been containing himself masterfully, but at this latest indignity, he cannot hold any longer. “You ask for her help and then reject it,” he snaps. “What would you have her say?”

“Kili. Be still.” The command is like a closed door, heavy and final, and carries the censure of a weary adult putting an end to a youngster’s antics.

“Perhaps a wee break is in order,” Balin cuts in smoothly before Kili can fully erupt. “I’m sure a bite and a pint would not go unappreciated.”

“We are done for the day.” Thorin tosses down the papers he’s been holding. “Gloin, talk to your counters. I want those tallies by tomorrow morning.”

And with that, the meeting is over. 

The others leave, only Fili, Kili, Balin and herself behind. Kili is breathing like he’s fought an entire army, chest heaving and bright spots of fury high on his cheekbones. Fili has him held fast, his hands fisted in his brother’s shirt. 

“It isn’t _right_ ,” Kili grinds out, almost in tears. “He has _no right_ to say such things.”

Balin sighs deeply. “Lad, you aren’t wrong. We’re lacking in supplies and it’s making everyone uneasy, especially with our kin on the way.”

“We have been in worse situations!”

“There is unfortunately a great difference between being a few loaves short and a mountain of starving people.”

Kili shakes off his brother, and now, Fili lets him. “He didn’t have to say that to her.”

“I’ll admit, it was unkind.” He looks at Tauriel. “None of us bears the full weight of our peoples’ deeds. He knows that.”

She nods, numb. “I do not expect spilled blood to be washed away in a single season.”

“Aye, I’m afraid it will take a bit more than that.” He turns to Kili. “Take a walk, lad. Get some air.”

“I do _not_ -”

“That was not a suggestion.” It is the sternest the old man has ever been, and all three obey without further protest. 

* * *

It takes a long time for Kili to calm down. The air on the battlements carries the kiss of spring: the sun a promise of summer glory, the breeze a reminder of icy chill. He stalks back and forth with clenched fists, dark as the passing winter itself. 

Tauriel thinks of him as a dam in this moment, every new conflict adding to the strain. Someday, he will break and she doesn’t dare imagine the aftermath. It frightens her to see him like this, the cheerful, reckless son eclipsed by a man eaten through with rage.

“Are you done?” Fili finally asks, arms crossed. 

“I didn’t see _you_ speaking up.”

“And how would that have gone? Insurrection at the planning table? Go ahead, throw a tantrum. Then what?”

“I would have made a _point_.” He stabs a finger at the ground. “He will _listen_ to me-”

“Do you even know your argument? Or is your plan to stand there and say _it isn’t fair it isn’t fair_ until he somehow relents?”

Kili opens his mouth and, finding no words, just roars at him and stumps away. 

Unsure, Tauriel looks at Fili, then at Kili’s retreating back. 

“Let him go. He’ll be back.” The heir sinks down on the ground, hands pressed into his face. “This will work out,” he mumbles. “We just have to see it through.”

“I told no lies to Thorin. I agreed to offer what I have and I will.”

He makes a motion and she obediently sits. In the lee of the wind, the sun-warmed wall is a blessing, and she lets the tension in her body bleed into the stone. “Uncle hates that you’re here,” Fili says. “He hates everything you represent. Once, I agreed with him, but having come to Erebor…”

“I face my own prejudices. You are not alone.”

“That is the way of it.” He reaches for his pipe and begins to prepare it. “We show that you’re reasonable. Kili and I show that _we’re_ reasonable. You are not Thranduil. I am not Thorin. Kili is...well, Kili is Kili.”

“I cannot offer any secrets. I do not know any.”

“If you did, revealing them would be for the worse.” Tucking the striker back in his jacket, he takes a few tentative puffs. “There is no easy path.”

That’s what Balin had told her at the gate: _This is not an easy path you tread_. 

Tauriel is an Elf. She is a tracker and a hunter, a leader of trackers and hunters. She knows all the hidden trails through Mirkwood. 

She of all people understands the delicacy of a difficult path.

* * *

The next day, she walks into the room behind Fili and Kili. As the room is assembled, she steps forward. “May I speak?”

Thorin glowers, but inclines his head. 

“I have betrayed my people,” she says. “I admit it freely. I do not deny what I have done. Perhaps I should hold myself in shame, but I cannot.”

“And your point?” Thorin says testily.

“Call me traitor, call me what you will. Whatever I am, I am not false. I am no liar. I have never deceived. I have never claimed to be other than I am. I knew my king would close his doors and yet I walked through. I was ordered to return and I did not.”

“And you were outcast for that?” Balin asks.

“You have met the Elvenking.”

“Indeed,” Thorin says darkly. “But telling me you walked out a door hardly makes you trustworthy.”

“In Dale, the Elves were in retreat,” she says calmly. “I knew there was a second army coming in from the north and I demanded we not turn away. When he declined to return to the field, I…” All attention is on her, a physical weight leaving no room for air. Kili’s knuckles are white on the edge of the table, his eyes wide. 

He hasn’t heard this. None the Dwarves have. 

“I raised my bow against my king,” she makes herself say, and although her voice is steady, the words fling themselves away like thrown knives. There is no sound, but a sense like a shiver still ripples through the room. Loyalty to kin and clan is the bedrock from which a Dwarf is born.

If they weren’t listening to her before, if they have regarded Tauriel as extraneous and unwelcome, they are certainly listening now. She is suddenly far more dangerous. Good. Let them take her seriously.

“I said things I will not repeat,” she says. “It was only by interruption from his son Legolas that there was no bloodshed. I went directly to Ravenhill. The rest, perhaps you know better than I.” She meets Thorin’s stare. “Nothing I have done has been hidden. I come to you with honesty. I have given you nothing you could not obtain for yourself. If I knew any great secrets of my people, I would not divulge them here. I am a traitor. I am not a spy.”

There is a long silence. “You have said what you have done,” Thorin finally says. “You have not said why.”

“The Orcs were in pursuit of your company. You know this.”

“You were as well.”

“You had escaped through the incompetence of those under my command. I was angry. Do not tell me you would not do the same.” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “My charge was to retrieve you, yes, but my life has been dedicated to cleansing filth from our lands.” Not her lands. Their lands. “You were my prisoners, but Orcs are my enemy. My king commanded we abandon pursuit.”

“Because we were Dwarves.”

How can Tauriel distill the entirety of Thranduil down to a single sentence? How can she recount that awful conversation in his throne room without the centuries of weight behind it. _I do not care about one dead Dwarf_ and _tell us what you know and I will set you free_. 

That last had punched the breath from her chest. She hadn’t realized in that moment, too furious to do more than quit the room without violence, but that was the instant her faith in Thranduil shattered. 

“Yes,” she says. “Because you were Dwarves, he let the Orcs pass.” It isn’t the whole truth, but she cannot explain how Thranduil has drawn himself further inside his kingdom, everything beyond his borders of lesser and lesser concern even in the few centuries she’s served him.

“The Orcs are dead,” Thorin says. “Yet here you remain.”

“I follow Kili. There is no other reason.”

“And why him alone?”

The room is too full of those she doesn’t know. Kili and Fili, she trusts absolutely. Balin met her at the gate that first day and made her promise not to take Kili away. The others - Gloin and his fellow merchants and accountants, Dain, his people - she will not bring them into a thing still deeply private. 

“If you cannot see,” Tauriel says, heart pounding, “then I cannot explain.”

He considers her with narrowed eyes, utterly inscrutable. She holds herself steady, fighting against a primal urge to seek out Kili. 

“That is another discussion,” Thorin rumbles. “Your candor is noted.” It’s phrased like a dismissal, but he waves them all to the table. “Gloin, tell me what you have.”

Tauriel is not called upon much that day, but when she is, there is perhaps the slightest thawing of the Mountain-King’s tone. 


	18. Chapter 18

There comes a day when there is a respite from the contract discussion while Dain consults with his own people. Once again, Tauriel finds herself sitting on the floor in Fili’s room, this time with a crumbling tome of her own: a ledger from Dale mapping the various trade routes and types of cargo delivered around Long Lake and other villages down the Celduin. It is dry reading, made even more so by the broad swathes of tiny, almost illegible script added as notation to every single page. Elven eyes are tireless, but even she is nearing a limit. 

A muffled snore jerks her back to the present. At the table, Fili’s head has fallen into a pile of his own arms. It’s not even midafternoon, but he’s been nodding since the morning, only half-listening to the conversation around him.

She looks over at Kili, making notes of his own from a stack of paper. “He should lie down.”

“That’s what _I_ told him.”

“He seems not to have accepted the advice.” 

“His exact words were ‘shove off.’”

“Ah.” Rising, she retrieves a heavy linen blanket from the bedroom and drapes it across Fili’s shoulders. He’s so deeply asleep his breathing doesn’t even change.

Kili follows her out on the balcony. Below them, Erebor flickers and glows with life, hammers and pickaxes ringing out amid the pleasant buzz of ordinary people doing ordinary things. The impossible breeze carries the smell of cooking food and forge smoke.

This is important, this task they’re doing and as difficult as it is, as unwelcome as she’s been made, Tauriel is still grateful to be a participant. A date has not been set for the official negotiations, but what’s being brought together is the summation of everything a mountain kingdom needs and all it can offer. It will be better once the Dwarves from the Blue Mountains arrive and a proper census can be conducted, but even with the pleasantly warm spring, they are at least two weeks distant. However she can prove herself to be a worthy partner to the youngest prince, she will break herself trying. Every day Thorin does not eject her from the discussions is one more day she’s made herself valuable. 

Still. She wants to hold Kili. She wants to fold him into her arms and press her face into his hair. She wants to slide her fingers into his trousers and hold him in other ways. She wants to feel his mouth on her breasts and everywhere else he’s willing to taste. 

More than anything, she wants to just...be at peace.

“It is not a good day,” she says quietly, tilting her head back to the sleeping heir. 

“No,” Kili agrees. His lips thin with worry. “Nor has it been for the better part of a week.”

“How else can I help?”

He shrugs helplessly. “Give him a fishing pole and send him out with a keg. Tell him not to come back until the keg is empty and the boat is full of trout.”

“Your uncle has eyes. He must see.”

“He’s _choosing_ not to.” A creak of leather as he shifts on his feet, an unconscious battle-stance. “Mother will sort him out. She always does. And us,” he adds. “We can make our case to her.”

It is exposed on the balcony. They are not so high up that they cannot easily be seen, so he just presses his shoulder to her arm and leans on the balustrade. After a long period of companionable silence, he says, “You said Elves offer each other silver rings. Do they craft them themselves?”

“It could be done. I have never asked. I only know that if the engagement is broken, the bands are melted down so they may never be used to mark another couple’s intent.”

“I like that.” He looks up at her. “I didn’t make the ring in your hair.”

“I accept it even so.”

“I took it out of the mail I wore on Ravenhill.”

Her heart shudders in her chest and with an involuntary twitch, she puts her hand to it, the metal tucked deep and warm in her braid. A flash of gold like sunlight in blowing snow, the taste of blood slick in her mouth and somewhere, Kili screaming a war cry like a furious, wounded animal.

 _Gilith_. 

Kili grins, but there’s a shiver behind it, a frisson of visceral recognition of all that by a miracle of the world never came to pass. “You and it saved me that day. I could not think of better.”

Tauriel does kiss him then, heedless of any watchers, and he breathes against her, hands tight at her waist. He glances back at Fili. “If we were alone…”

“There will be time,” she says. There _has_ to be. “I am certain.”

“Time, yes.” A pleasant heat enters his voice. “Never enough.”

How is it that she is with this man? Perhaps it is because she’s never had a lover, but she has never heard an Elf use such a tone. Would an Elven husband speak so? Would she have the same desire? Perhaps her body has so aligned with Kili’s that whatever languid Elven passion she might have once expressed is now so condensed it matches his own. At the barest moment she is ready to strip herself naked and claim him. 

How _dull_ her life would be had Kili not blithely crashed into it.

Across the room, Fili stirs. “You talk to him,” Kili says. “He listens to _you_.”

It takes careful convincing. As she kneels by the chair, Fili regards her with half-lidded confusion and for a long time, she isn’t sure he even understands. Finally, he allows himself to be hauled to his feet and into the bedroom, making no move to help as Kili unbuckles his boots. 

“Am I well?” The question comes out small and plaintive. 

“You are _tired_ ,” she tells him. “Rest. You ask much of yourself.”

Fili settles back against the pillows, staring at the ceiling and seeing nothing. Kili comes and leans in close. “We’re right out there if you need us.”

“Tell me this isn’t forever.”

“It’s not forever. You haven’t had a day like this in ages. We’ve just been working hard.”

“...tired of working hard.”

“When this is done,” Kili says, “we are going to get drunk and start the biggest tavern brawl Middle-Earth has ever seen.”

There’s a dry chuckle. “ _You’ll_ start it. I’ll be the one dragging you out.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

His eyes slide closed. “Kee...I don’t want Mother to see me like this.”

“You can explain that I’ve chosen an Elf for a wife,” Kili offers. “That will keep her distracted enough.”

But his brother is already asleep. 

* * *

Rest is what they all need. If there were no obstacles, Tauriel would take Kili back to his rooms and undress him slowly, kissing away the tension and then kissing him back to a fury. She would drink the sweat from his skin and rock him in her arms until they were both boneless and satisfied. 

She could do that. She looks across the table at him as Kili frowns into his notes, one hand idly fisted in his long, shaggy hair. In the months since Thorin was crowned, the promised beard filled in admirably, although in an uncharacteristic show of vanity, he’s been trimming it carefully. Tauriel finds the whole process fascinating, both as someone new to Dwarven anatomy and as also as the lucky someone who entwines her fingers through the stiff hairs as she brings his face close to hers. 

“How long will it get?” she’d asked. 

“So long,” he’d said loftily. “The sons of Durin produce especially thick and impressive beards.”

“Indeed.”

“It’s a sign of great virility.”

“Is that so?”

“Kiss me and find out.”

 _Gilith_. Incorrigible. Beloved. 

Now, Tauriel reaches over and gently tugs the paper from his grasp. “It is very late.”

He blinks and rubs at his eyes. “Is it?”

Even deep in Erebor, her body still knows the passage of time. There have been trips out for food, meals and snacks brought back with fresh, clean water and a small keg of ale that between them they’ve drained thoroughly dry. Fili emerged twice, vague and unfocused, was immediately sat down and fed, and then sent back to bed without protest. “Well after midnight.”

“There will be talk if you leave now.” He offers a tired grin. “You should just stay with me.”

Oh, she wants to, if only to sleep by his side like a sister. “Do not make me offers I cannot resist.”

Kili leans across the table to tuck a wayward strand of hair from her face, his knuckles just barely brushing her cheek. “I know.” 

Together they put Fili’s space back into some semblance of order, and walk down the hall to his own rooms, the ledger and all its minute, inscrutable notations heavy in her arms.

“Come in just for a moment?” he asks, holding open the great wooden door. 

“If I come in, I will not leave.”

“I don’t want you to.” He waves a hand down the hall. “Your place is a long walk, and you’ll be back here in the morning anyway.”

“Kili…”

“ _Amrâlimê_ ,” he says, and wearily: “Why is this so hard?”

Perhaps she’s more tired than she thinks, or Fili’s challenges today hit a particularly deep, sensitive spot in her heart, but Tauriel can’t help the sudden burn in her eyes. Leaning her head against the doorframe, she hugs the ledger to her chest. “I want you,” she says, trying to keep her voice steady but failing. “I will do anything to be with you. Have I not already sworn it?”

“I have never doubted you,” he says, taking the book from her arms and putting his head to her chest. Reflexively, she curls around him, pressing her face to the top of his head. There’s something about his smell that worms into the least parts of her, bringing with it a primal sense of safety she has never felt anywhere else. “Forgive me. We’re both doing everything we can and I _hate_ that nothing has changed.”

“Thorin speaks to me now,” she mumbles into his hair. “I count that as good progress.”

“That’s not progress.” After a long silence, he speaks, the words clenched ahead of the wrath that hangs behind, “It isn’t right, but I hate him right now. He wasn’t this way before this quest. As soon as the mountain came into view, something changed and I don’t know how to change it back. He might be a good king, but once, he was a good man. He raised us. Now he listens to no one.” There’s a huff of breath. “I know I keep saying Mother will fix this, but she _will_. If anyone can bring him back to himself, it’s Mother.”

What had Thranduil said? A sickness lies upon the sons of Durin, the love of gold consuming all reason and sense. Is that what has happened here? She knows aid that was promised was denied and Thranduil and the Men of Dale fought against Dain’s forces as they came to support the new King Under the Mountain. The conflict only turned outward when the Orcs became a common enemy, but whatever the underlying cause must still linger.

“Ask me to stay once more,” Tauriel says, all resolve gone, “and I will.”

He almost does. When he pulls back, she sees it in his face, a naked war between propriety and what they both so desperately want. Instead, tugging her face down toward his, Kili kisses her forehead, an action as slow and pained as it is final. “Goodnight, _amrâlimê_. You’re never out of my thoughts.”

The door closes, leaving her alone in the hallway with the tome and an aching heart. 

Tauriel means to go to her own rooms, but the walk back is suddenly insurmountable. Instead, she settles down on a bench in one of the common areas, her back against the wall and her legs folded under her, the ledger set within easy reach. 

It is not the easiest sleep she’s had, but somehow she still manages, and for once, dreams of nothing. 


	19. Chapter 19

The days slide into each other. Rain comes across the valley like folds of watered silk, the sun a steady warmth between each petulant storm. All that was barren during the winter is becoming thick and bright with green. In Mirkwood, the Elves will be celebrating, feasting and singing for the coming of the new year. 

Tauriel is not with them. The Dwarves mark different holidays on a different calendar. Like their runes and their language, they hold many aspects of their culture as deeply private, and even living among them for months, she still can’t make sense of it. If a Dwarf has something they want her to read, it will be written in Westron. Even Fili and Kili are hesitant to share the shorthand they’ve developed, not out of any mistrust but out of long-ingrained habit. 

She’d asked once what the consequences would be, and even Kili’s eyes had gone wide. He’d stammered, clawing to define something that she could never ken, and she withdrew the question. He gives her anything she asks for and anything he thinks she might need or want, but for this, though he chews his lip in clear agony, he doesn’t offer to teach her. If she asks, he will, so she doesn’t ask.

A preliminary meeting is scheduled in Dale between those involved in the negotiations, excepting the two kings themselves. It’s been far too long since Tauriel has seen the Lord of Dale’s children, and feels no great surprise when she finds Bain has noticeably overtaken her in height. Sigrid sparkles with pleasure at her arrival and Tilda, dear Tilda, lights up like a summer noon.

Still, Tauriel cannot relax. She has been part of the contract preparation for weeks now, and despite the rocky start, Dwarves gone from the land for two centuries find her perspective grudgingly helpful. Those at the table beside her in Erebor have become if not familiar then at least markedly less hostile. Here in Dale, Tauriel is forced to accept the reality that the other half of this meeting will be representatives from Thranduil and her stomach twists at the prospect of her reception.. 

She is a coward. She regrets nothing, but feeling disgust from merchants in the marketplace will pale next to the censure from people she most certainly knows from court. 

It’s the three of them in the room provided to Fili and Kili as the brothers wash their faces and make sure every buckle and button shines. Tauriel perches on the edge of the large bed, trying to calm her apprehension by focusing on the way Kili rubs at a clasp to remove a leftover smudge of oil. She wants very much to be the thing beneath his thumb. 

“I am not going,” she finally says, and both brothers turn as one to stare at her. “The contract is Dwarven. I am not a Dwarf. I have no place at the table-”

“You have to,” Kili protests. “You’ve been part of the writing.”

“The Elves will not receive me kindly. It will bias the assembly.”

“They’re not going to receive any of us kindly.”

“I do not want to jeopardize the contract.”

“You and me both,” Fili mutters. Tauriel and Kili look over at him and he gestures toward his head. 

There’s a long moment of awkward silence. 

“Look,” says Fili, leg bouncing nervously, “I need both of you there. I admit it. If I falter, it will jeopardize more than a contract.”

“You won’t,” Kili says fiercely. “You’ll be fine-”

“-because you’ll be with me. I will not go alone.”

“Balin-” 

“The contract with Dale was hard enough,” Fili snaps. “You know that. And they _want_ to be our allies.”

Tauriel makes herself rise and cross the room, coming to adjust the fall of white fox fur at his shoulders. “Am I not the heir?” Fili asks her, and there is enough of Thorin in his voice that she stops, hands frozen in his collar. “You are here by my request. No one but my uncle can countermand that.”

Something inside her comes unclenched, just a little. “Yes, my lord,” she says, and the alarmed look on his face and subsequent scowling flush when he realizes she’s teasing will sustain Tauriel the entire day.

* * *

Tauriel had not been part of the negotiation with Dale, and so has never seen most of the King’s Palace. Sigrid, dressed with neat formality, takes them down the halls to the wide room in which they will be meeting. Right before they enter, Tilda darts from the shadows, gesturing for Tauriel to kneel. “I got you a flower.” As she tucks a fragrant little sprig of daphne into the back of Tauriel’s braid, she whispers, “It’s for luck.”

She _loves_ these children of Men. How is it that in all her centuries in Mirkwood, she never spent any time with the children of her own kin? How has she spent her life so isolated in her duty that she has never known anything beyond?

She has _friends_ now. In Mirkwood, she had companions whom she would have named ‘friend’, but the depth of feeling she had for them is the smallest thing compared to the wild surge of affection in her chest. 

Thranduil may seal himself behind his borders, but Tauriel had been sealed inside her own body. She hadn’t known it until she was already split open.

“For you,” Tilda says, threading another sprig through Kili’s topmost buttonhole, and then one for Fili. When she comes to Balin, she hesitates, not as familiar and not as comfortable. 

The older Dwarf accepts the offered sprig with a deep bow and his warmest smile, earning a shy grin in return. “I shall wear this with pride and honor.” Dwalin grumbles something about not needing to smell like an Elf, but at a glance from his brother, inclines his head in thanks and tucks it into one of his pockets. 

The Dwarves are resplendent, every inch the royal delegation that they are. Balin’s robes glow rich as the reddest autumn sunset, his immaculate beard a fall of whitest snow. Beside him, Dwalin looms like a Dwarven hero from an old song, in leathers that flow like water under steel-gray scale mail, the deep emerald color so dark it only reveals itself in burnished folds and seams. 

Somewhere between the bedroom and this hallway, Fili has relaxed into himself, perhaps grounded by the weight of golden mail and the coat over it, a beautiful thing shot through with deep embossing and studded with heavy golden pieces like stars against an indigo sky. The fox fur highlights the wheat-pale of his hair, his braids and beads immaculate. 

And Kili, beloved, beautiful Kili: today, he _shines_ , a tunic of sapphire blue under a jacket of golden mail as bright as his brother’s, and above it, a surcoat of warm, acorn-brown leather. He’s actually bound his hair back today, a little silver clip catching the parts that fall in his face while the rest curls and lingers in the marmot pelt at his shoulders. There is never a moment when Tauriel isn’t stunned by his presence, but for a long, breathless moment, she is too dazzled to move. 

For all, cuffs and collars feature deep, intricate embroidery in heavy Dwarven form, glistening with gold and silver thread. Buttons are inlaid or carved, the might of a mountain kingdom displayed in ways that are neither ostentatious nor boastful, just a frank example of the heritage and wealth these four Dwarves represent. 

Tauriel has dressed simply in the dress made by Unne, sturdy fabric in green and linen, her only concession to Kili’s days of wheedling a forest-dark Dwarven cloak, the smallest of embroidery at the edge. “It looks like leaves,” he’d said hopefully. The design does not, to her sense, look anything even vaguely leaf-like, but she’d accepted the gift with grace and true gratitude. 

It must please him, because every time Kili meets her gaze, amber want kindles in his eyes and Tauriel is helpless against the echoing surge in her own body. 

* * *

The room set for the negotiation is large and circular, with huge windows that open to fresh air and the sun-gilded city below. Rotten stone filigree in some of the windows gives a sense of what this place must have been before the dragon ravaged it, but the day is pleasantly warm, the breeze light but not intrusive. A large, round table sits at the center, unadorned but polished to a gleam that highlights every nick and battlescar across its surface. There is nothing in Dale untouched by war, not houses, not tables, not chairs. 

Tauriel enters the room behind the Dwarves, and when she does, there’s a sharp intake of breath. The Elves have arrived before them and she sees with dismay that she knows every single one of them. 

Goldir - the leader of the delegation, keen, resolute, unflappable - stares at her, truly caught off-guard. “The rumors are true,” he says in Sindarin. “Some have claimed to see you here in Dale, but many of us doubted.” His expression changes, going hard. “I would rather believe you dead.”

She is a young sapling, bending in harsh winds with ease. “I am gratified to yet live.”

“Perhaps.” His eyes flick from her face to her Dwarven-style clothes, the briefest flash of disgust on his face, and without another word turns to smoothly express gratitude to the Lord of Dale for his hospitality. The other Elves - Ranthel, dear, dear Ornith, business-minded Emlimben, and of course Teithor, who she would be a fool not to expect - don’t even acknowledge her. 

Tauriel attended Thranduil for centuries. She has delivered reports and been personally greeted by all five of these individuals as welcome and valued. She remembers the celebration when Ornith had her son, and the sorrow of all when Ranthel’s wife fell to an Orc arrow. Tauriel wants to run to them, to shake them, to demand they see her and not dismiss her, to ask about their families and successes. In the distance, Mirkwood spreads across the land in a dense swath, precious and forbidden, and Tauriel desperately wants to know if it is being kept safe from spiders and other evils in her absence. She trusts her lieutenants - her former lieutenants, she reminds herself, and it stings - but they are not _her_. 

Tauriel has no claim on any of it. In raising her bow at her king, she renounced all connection and obligation. None of them owe her even the slightest recognition and Tauriel must bear it. She made her choice without regret. She can bear the pain of its consequences. 

Kili shoots her a quick, worried glance and doesn’t look convinced when she offers the smallest shake of her head in reassurance.

When they come together at the table, Goldir immediately says, “No.”

“No?” Balin says. 

“You do not belong here,” he says to Tauriel in sharp Sindarin. 

“I have been asked.”

“My king is not obligated to consider this alliance.”

Bard gestures to the table. “Perhaps we sit first.”

“I will not sit at a table with this one,” Goldir says flatly, switching to Westron.

“I will not sit at a table without her,” Kili shoots back. 

“Then these negotiations are over.”

“Please,” Bard breaks in, his tone icy. “You are all guests in my home. I invite who I wish.”

Goldir is unimpressed. “They may be your guests, but the one in their midst is not welcome in Elven business.”

“I will leave,” Tauriel says to Balin quietly. “I have no place here.”

He puts a firm hand on her arm. “We will not be dictated to.” Turning to Goldir, he offers a conciliatory smile. “We mean no slight. Tauriel came to our aid during the battle and saved the lives of both princes and the king himself. We owe her a great debt and are gratified to have her here.”

Dear Balin. He welcomed her into Erebor and delivered her to her love with full knowledge of why she came. He has kept his own counsel on the matter. Without his firm, gentle diplomacy, Tauriel is certain the Dwarves’ colony in the Blue Mountains would be far more precarious. 

“She is a traitor to our people and is unwelcome.”

“She is here to observe. We value her opinion.”

Ranthel does acknowledge her then, her black eyes coming to spear her with inky accusation. “I wonder what opinions she has shared.”

Tauriel deserves this. Their censure is justified. She forces her face to stay calm and impassive, willing her pulse to slow. “I assure you-”

“You were not asked,” Goldir interrupts. To Balin, “If you insist, she may stay, but she must be silent.”

Kili opens his mouth, livid, but from her position, Tauriel sees Fili give him a sharp kick. It almost doesn’t work.

To Tauriel, Goldir adds in Sindarin, “Your presence is an insult to these proceedings. Whatever foul magic you have used to entrap these foolish Dwarves will not work on us. 

“There is no magic,” she says levelly. 

“Then they are fools all the more.” He purses his lips. “You will not speak. You will not intervene. You will not record what is said. I will humor the Dwarves only if you are invisible.”

She wants a scathing retort, but the hurt is so deep, none comes. She wants to say that she was outcast, not declared dead, but these five consult closely with Thranduil and easily by necessity absorb his views. She cannot say anything in her defense because nothing will suffice.

“If we could begin,” Bard interjects in Westron. 

Tauriel tucks herself away, counting her breaths until her heart calms. She is a hunter and a tracker. Patience has never been a facet of who she is, not when she feels so deeply wounded, especially not when Kili is boiling beside her with righteous indignity, but she knows how to swallow it all back and be still.


	20. Chapter 20

When the day ends, Tauriel takes her leave with all the dignity she can summon. Snared by a discussion, Kili throws her a desperate glance she can’t acknowledge, and with great resolve, she makes it outside, down a long arcade and into a private corner of a deserted patio before the tears overflow. She weeps until she aches, and when she can control herself, she goes to the heavy stone balustrade and tucks herself into the space where it meets the larger wall, staring out over the orange tile roofs and pale sandstone facades of Dale below. 

How can it be that she feels so utterly empty, her ribcage a barrel waiting for a long drop to the river below? She reaches for the space in her heart consumed with Kili and finds only a new well of sadness. 

She loves him. The moment he offered his name through the bars of his cell, the moment a Dwarven moniker twisted into the Elvish word of what she holds most sacred: she was lost. She had expected to die on Ravenhill, the penultimate end to a whirlwind too chaotic and too fierce to be called courtship. When she woke in Dale, Tauriel had no direction. All she knew was that she needed to get to Kili’s side. Everything that has come after is uncharted. She had not considered how _being_ with Kili would actually mean. 

If only it were they two, if only they were simple people whose sole concern was their own happiness - this is what she’s been telling herself for months, but they are not only two. They will never be only two. Kili is a prince of his people and Tauriel, Tauriel is a monster in the eyes of those who once called her kin. She wants to help, to smooth things over, to do everything she can so that she and Kili may claim each other with full honesty, but perhaps her insistence is only hindering her purpose.

Perhaps the curse of the runestone is that she will always be close enough to see what she so desperately wants, but never able to take it in hand. The runestone is always with her, always a comforting weight in her pocket, always reminding. 

How close they both came to breaking that promise. 

It doesn’t take long until the sound of his heavy boots walking at speed echoes down the arcade and breaks into a run when he finally spots her. He throws himself down beside her, flinging his arms around her and pressing his face to her chest. “I couldn’t find you,” he says breathlessly. “I couldn’t find you and I thought you’d left-”

At this moment, if she could open up his body and crawl inside, it still wouldn’t be close enough. “Where would I go? I cannot leave you.”

“What did they say to you?”

“I will not repeat it.”

“ _Tauriel_.”

“I made choices,” she snaps. “I stand by them.”

“I will not let them insult you!”

“It will happen whether you will it or not.”

He leans back, putting up his hands to cradle her face. “Tauriel,” he says soberly, the anger, the deep, enduring anger that lingers so close to his skin, flickering behind his eyes. “ _Amrâlimê_ . They gave you up. They have no claim on you. They should count themselves grateful to even _see_ you.”

“That is not how it-”

“It _is_ like that! These crimes are absurd! What have you done?”

“You know-”

“List them for me.” The urge to shove him away is primal, but he grabs at her wrists and holds her fast. “This is me,” Kili says, Thorin’s authority and his own earnest heart thick in his voice. “I love you. I have no judgement. You know this. You _know_ this. Just list them out.”

Before she met Kili, Tauriel had been absolutely certain she had recovered. Legolas brought her back to herself when she was little more than a child, and since then, every day, every year, every century is one more that separates her from that time. If anyone had asked her, she would have shaken her head and denied any lingering effects, and she would have been _right_. 

Now, she is unravelling. She doesn’t know why. Perhaps she broke that night in Lake-town, when her body rang with exhaustion from an impossible healing, whatever mad obsession with Kili taking hold like claws, and she had had to swallow it all away to survive a raging inferno so like the one she doesn’t quite remember. She has heard of Elves whose hearts are wounded by the world that they cannot do anything but seek peace in the West. Is that her future? Is that her _present?_

He’s still looking at her, his broad, beloved face waiting, watching. Kili, _gilith,_ an accident of syllables that changed her utterly the moment she heard it. There is so little innocence in him these days, so little light in either of them.

How much light did they even carry at the first?

“I knew my lord Thranduil would have his kingdom closed,” she finally says. “I left and disobeyed an order to return.”

“Walked out a door, yes, we’ve established that,” Kili says. 

“You simplify it!”

“Do I? Why did you do it?”

“To chase the Orcs.”

“Which you said yourself you would have done had _they_ not been chasing _us_.”

The fury and frustration of that moment boils up. “I have always killed such filth as they encroach our lands. It was misguided to let them pass through!”

“ _Yes_ ,” says Kili. “What happened next?”

Legolas told her to follow him and instead, she’d stayed behind and wrenched the poison from Kili’s body. It was her mission to track the Orcs and she’d abandoned it. “I let them go.”

“To do what?” He’s being _annoying_. If it were anyone else using this slow, patronizing tone, she would have gotten up and left. Instead, she’s snared here with his hands tight on her wrists. 

“You know why.”

“ _Amrâlimê_ ,” he says, suddenly gentle, “I want you to hear yourself say it.”

Her eyes burn. She had been terrified, both of the enormity of her task and for a nebulous future she couldn’t yet name. “To save you.”

“Yes. You _saved_ me. I was dying and you saved me. Is that not worth something?”

It is worth everything. It was reckless, heedless, a frantic grasping in the dark, but here he is, alive, the smell of him caught in her lungs. “Yes.”

“You say you pointed your weapon at your king. Why?”

In that moment, she had only known desperation. Kili’s name throbbed in her mouth like a second heartbeat, her body gone feverish with torment. For the second time, Thranduil was betraying the Dwarves: he had watched as they burnt running from a ruined home, and now he was watching them fall on the battlefield, rows and rows like a child’s blocks tilting toward the earth. Thranduil had decided he’d had enough, as if war were a pretty game that could be quit and taken back up at leisure. It was so selfish, so petty, so horrifying that in that moment, she did the only thing that might have gained his attention, and oh, it had. 

“He came to retrieve his gems,” she spits out, the fury rising as if she were still standing in Dale amid bloodstained snow. “He did not come to aid. You could not have held against the Orcs, not with so many, not on two fronts and _he would have walked away._ He looked at the world around him and chose not to see. Did he not think his own kingdom could be next? He hides in his halls and turns away from Middle-Earth, ignoring all but what interests him. It was not right. It was cruel, _gilith_ , and I could not let you be slaughtered!”

“Yes,” Kili says. “And because you saved me, I’m told I saved Thorin, and he struck the final blow against Azog. Without you, the battle would have been lost.” His voice is shaking. So are his hands. “They have no right to accuse you of whatever they have. They should be showering you with praise. Nothing you’ve done has been for personal gain. You didn’t just leave because you had a desire to do evil.”

“But it has indeed been for personal gain,” Tauriel says lightly, trying to turn the conversation to brighter things. “Do I not have starlight in my arms?”

At any other moment, he would take up the comment and follow it with a self-assured repartee of his own. Instead, his face remains broad and almost sad, and he reaches up to palm her cheeks, bringing her forehead down to rest against his own. “Don’t do that.”

The urge to twist away is overwhelming and visceral but he holds her fast. “I must.”

“No, you don’t. I don’t want you to.”

It feels so much like the conversation they had the day she arrived in Erebor: _and if I choose to deceive myself? What then?_

In the mad scramble that led to Tauriel and Thranduil in Dale, weapons drawn and on the furious edge of a kinslaying, she had not had time to just _think_. She had not truly considered all that it meant to be outcast. The truth of it lay in her heart, sharp and fresh, but it hadn’t sunk into her marrow. She only knew that Kili must survive. Now that he has, now that she has known one season of exile, the deep weight of all future seasons of exile crushes her as surely as she’d been crushed on Ravenhill. It would be easier, she thinks, if instead of limbs going soft and dead, her heart could do the same, the part that so loves her home made blissfully numb. 

It is one ache to sit on Erebor’s battlements alone and stare at the forest from a great distance. It is another, deeper pain to see such revulsion in Elven faces who had only ever looked upon her with a pleasant mien. Somehow, she hadn’t considered that she would be outcast from affection as well. She had believed she was truly righteous, and she _still_ believes it. She saved Kili. Lake-town burned and she helped dig through the aftermath. She went with Legolas to Gundabad to discover the second army, and when it arrived, she laid life and body aside to warn Kili and his kin. Thranduil’s disfavor was guaranteed; such cold censure from her kin hadn’t even come into mind.

“I chose this,” she whispers, her throat convulsing at the words. “Why does it hurt so much?”

And then the tears return, great, shuddery things like the waves of rain that slide across the valley. Kili tucks her against his shoulder and lets her weep, tightly wrapped around her as if trying to drown her in his warmth. 

When all that’s left are exhausted little shivers and a great dampness in the marmot fur at his collar, she makes herself breathe again. “You left your home, too.”

“We did.” He swallows. “I didn’t think it would be the last time, but Mother’s coming and that makes it final.”

“Is it all your people?”

“I don’t know. If she’s coming, it must be. She would not leave any behind.”

Tauriel suddenly can’t wait for his mother to arrive. A lightness comes into his voice when he talks of her. Perhaps it is simply the urge for maternal love that all beings feel, but if she is Thorin’s sister, Tauriel has no doubt that Kili’s mother is just as fearsome and strong.

Perhaps Kili will be able to calm himself and the anger will begin to ease. Pulling the runestone from her pocket, Tauriel presses it against his palm. “You will be able to return this. Your promise will have been kept.”

His fingers spasm around it and after a long moment, he kisses it and puts it back in her hand. “It is my promise to you now.”

“You are all I have,” she makes herself say, the truth dragged to light and laid out like a hunter’s fresh kill. It can either nourish them or be left to rot. “I have nothing else.”

“You have more than me,” he says. “You have all my kin, and they _will_ come to love you, although,” he adds, and _there_ is the twinkle she so craves, “no one could ever love you in all the ways I do.”

“Kiss me,” she says, feeling brittle and fragile and needing his heat to steady her.

They kiss, twined around each other above the city, his body a familiar and comfortable weight against her own. She aches to be smothered, to have him peel off all the parts of her that chafe and restrict, to fill her lungs with his own breath and be purified from the inside out. 

It would be so easy to take him back to the room she’s been offered, to hook her fingers around his belt and set aside every piece of his royal attire until all he wears is her.

Eventually, they return to themselves, coming to rest shoulder-to-shoulder, hands joined as the sun sets over the city. They sit for a long time, and when they collect themselves enough to return to the others, if anyone has any suspicions, they go mercifully unvoiced. 

* * *

The next day, Tauriel arrives with the Dwarves without comment. She does not look at Goldir and the others. She sits beside Kili, the little ring of mail in her hair and the outside of her foot pressed against his, and feels for a moment, the smallest bit stronger. 

* * *

Two days of productive talk pass without event. On the third day, everything shatters. 

It is late in the afternoon, the sky gray and weary. A chill damp has settled deep into the stone. Tauriel is making her way down one of the long arcades, seeking a bit of quiet, when her own name snaps out and snares her from behind. She turns on her heel and-

 _Thranduil_.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart. You're all are lovely, lovely people and I appreciate each and every one of you.

Thranduil is here, wearing sleek travelling clothes and a terrifying expression she knows all too well. 

“I was told you were here,” he says in Sindarin without greeting. “I see you have turned your subtlety in the woods to more nefarious pursuits.” Not getting a reply, he inclines his head. “Instead of slinking through the halls, walk with me.”

Of their own accord, her legs obey, her body still ringing with shock. He isn’t supposed to be here. He wasn’t at the table. He does not leave the Woodland Realm, close though it is, for any but the most dire of circumstances. How has he come?

Thranduil speaks. “Was betraying me not enough? Are you now collaborating with my adversaries?” Adversaries. Not enemies. Progress? “Answer me, Tauriel. I am greatly displeased with your presence.”

He is more than greatly displeased. He is _furious_. Is it possible he came all the way from Mirkwood to _shame_ her? He cannot be that petty, but here he is, now halted in his path and regarding her with an expression like a coming storm.

“They are not your adversaries.”

“That is not the question I asked.”

“I am here on their invitation.”

He cocks his head, his eyes gone glacier-blue and just as lethal. “My patience wears thin.” 

Mind racing, she tries to dredge up an answer. “They requested my perspective,” she says, heart pounding. “They have been absent long enough they are no longer familiar with trade and where it came from. They inquired as to the provenance of the spiders and of current trade to Lake-town. I have no great knowledge, but I obliged when I could.”

Thranduil offers her a thin smile. “You _obliged_.”

“I offered only what is general knowledge.”

“General for whom?”

This is a trap, and they both know Tauriel has no choice but to walk right into it. “Myself,” she says, humiliation sinking into her bones with sick, chill fingers. “General to myself.”

He regards her in silence, watching her struggle. “And what do they hope to accomplish with such _general knowledge_?”

“They wanted to know what exists so they may arrange themselves accordingly.”

“I see. And it did not occur to you that you carried information I would not like shared?”

There is no way for her to escape. “I have told them nothing that even the most disinterested would not know.”

“Why should I believe you?”

He shouldn’t, and yet he _should_. He _knows_ her entire being was turned to the forest paths and the foul creatures that encroached them. How many times has he praised her dedication and focus?

She will _not_ cry in front of him. “My lord.”

“Am I?” Without waiting for an answer, he returns to an imposing stroll down the arcade. “Tell me, Tauriel. How fare the halls of the Mountain King?”

She suddenly wishes Kili had given her a huge bead, something ornate and unmistakable that marks her as his. Instead, the tiny gold link is hidden in her braid, a silent comfort. “They endure.”

“If I wanted oblique misdirection, I would have gone to Thorin Oakenshield. You were once my eyes and ears in my kingdom. I am asking.”

“I will not betray a confidence.”

“Indeed.” He turns to look at her, ice in his eyes. “You seem eager enough to betray mine.”

She breathes into her belly, keeping her head level and her gaze at the city beyond.

“It matters not. Despite what Thorin may say, I am not here as an enemy. Bard King of Dale has offered to broker trade and I have come for that.” He glances at her. “Do not take me for a fool, Tauriel. I have other, _trustworthy_ -” this, almost drawled- “eyes and ears. I have been told the heir struggles with words. There is weakness in that line.”

“That is not weakness,” she says suddenly. How could he possibly know about Fili? But Goldir and his companions are keen-eyed and ancient. Just because Thorin refuses to see doesn't mean others stay as ignorant. “Many great kings have surely suffered greater hardship.”

“Name one.”

She can’t. She is no scholar, and again and again it returns to hobble her.

“Perhaps such a king may have existed, but this world requires strength.”

“He _is_ strong,” she retorts. “He is recovering.”

“A broken back is far easier to heal than the soft tissue of the mind.”

Her cheeks go hot.

“You think I did not know of your condition? My son may disobey me, but I am not ignorant.”

“You have many eyes and ears, indeed.”

“What of the other prince? Do you still claim this is love?”

The words come without hesitation. “I claim it because it is true.”

He stops from his slow, leonine pacing, and abruptly turns to run a brief, dispassionate hand through a bit of her hair. “You fade.”

The contact feels fraught, a violation that cannot be spoken. “My lord?”

“You stand here in the company of Dwarves, in Dwarven-” his eyes flick up and down her body, his lip making the barest curl of distaste- “ _clothes,_ as pale and thin as some sightless worm, and you will tell me you are happy?”

“Yes. I will, for I am.”

“Elves do not belong underground.”

“Are your own halls not built into stone?” It comes out despite herself, and at once she wants the floor to open beneath her and swallow her.

Thranduil’s eyes flash with annoyance. “You dare compare my kingdom to a filthy hole?”

“I state its location. I do not cast judgement.”

“Is that so?” He gives a humorless chuckle. “Tauriel, you have never had a talent for falsehood. You are unwell and so you bite at me, spinning stories to people you know I mistrust. Tell me, do they let you out of your cage often, or is this the first time you’ve seen sky?”

“I am not locked away. I am where I choose to be.”

“You blame me,” Thranduil says, “for a thing in which you were never involved. You think I made an error in judgement when I recalled my forces from the battlefield. You think me wrong for not embracing the Dwarves the day the dragon came.” He turns to face her, a capricious creature with thousands of years to hone his own self-interest to sharp-edged precision. He is not here to examine her. He’s here because she betrayed him and he wants to make an example of her. “Tell me, Tauriel, since you have become as wise a tactician as a diplomat, what would you have done?”

She doesn’t answer. He knows exactly what she thinks. 

“I see. You think I chose to abandon the Dwarves that day. You think me a villain, standing by as innocent Dwarves lost their lives. How heartless, you say to yourself, how cruel. Tell me, what do dragons covet beyond all else?”

The answer is gold. The answer is always gold. 

“Gold,” he says. “Yet for all their passion, they never forge a single coin. They lie in wait for another greedy creature to extract and shape their treasure, and when the hoard is sufficiently amassed, they strike. Such as it was with Thror, mighty king and ancestor of your misguided affection.”

There is no point in responding. He has warmed to his favorite subject and cannot be stopped. “Do you know why they call it dragon-sickness?”

_I am sure you will tell me_ , she almost says, but at the last moment bites it back.

“Some say it is a malady incited by possession of a dragon’s treasure. The years of avarice sink into the gold like the slow drip of water onto stone, and when plundered eat away at the plunderer’s mind until nothing of substance remains.” He turns and looks at her. “I, however, have seen the truth. Indeed, the dragon did come to the Dwarves’ mountain, but the foul beast was lured there by what Thror had already amassed. I cautioned him what his greed would bring, but he did not heed my warning. Nor did his grandson. The lust for treasure is a stain upon that bloodline, a weakness for gold only rivalled by that of a dragon, and so hence it was named.” He tilts his head. “Such weakness ran from Thror to his son, and it has come to possess his grandson as well. You cannot deny it. It will pass from Thorin to his nephews and any of their descendants so long as that cursed line persists.”

She wants to protest, but his eyes regard her with such pity, she’s frozen in place. “You tell yourself your prince is different. You say to yourself that such things will not come to pass. Perhaps you even believe you could save him.” His voice goes soft, but where another might speak with gentle kindness, she hears only empty dismissal. “He is a Dwarf, Tauriel. For all his clever words, you cannot know his heart. You are a fool to even try.”

“I have made my choice,” she says levelly. “I will not go back on it.”

There’s a sharp bark of what might be laughter. “Perhaps you, too, have been infected with dragon gold.”

“Why did you not help them?”

All amusement drops away, ice-white fire blazing up in his eyes. “They brought ruin upon themselves. I would not let my kingdom fall to the same calamity.”

“So you left them to die!”

“Yes, they died. That is what mortals do. Empires of Men and Dwarves have passed before my eyes, each self-important and each ephemeral as spider-silk. In the Woodland Realm, we endure. We have always done so, and so we will.”

“There is so much darkness in the world!” she bursts out. “And you would have us hide in the forest until it consumes everything beyond.”

“Yes,” he says frankly. “I would. I have seen the world change around us and I will see it change again. My kingdom endures. Do not think I am ignorant, Tauriel. It is because I know that I keep us apart. I have seen death and ruin so far beyond your ken. You are so young. You have seen nothing. You _know_ nothing.” He sees her start to protest and silences her with a flick of a finger. “You think this is love? You think all the chaos you have caused is justified? You are not Idril. You are not Luthien. No one will sing of this.”

“I do not need songs!”

He considers her. “Long have you challenged me and I allowed it because you served me well. Was it not enough to live in my favor? Tell me. I am truly curious.”

“I fell in love,” she says, forcing her voice to stop shaking. “I cannot live without him. All I have done is for my own heart.”

“Your heart.” Thranduil turns away. “I had such confidence in you, in your potential,” he calls back, his voice light as if they were discussing nothing more fraught than the weather, his steps effortlessly measured and even. “You disappoint me, Tauriel. Do not make me look upon you again."


	22. Chapter 22

She doesn’t know where she goes after that. She only knows that she finds herself in the doorway to a warm little salon, all four Dwarves on their feet and staring. 

“What happened?” Balin asks as Kili darts across the room to pull her closer to the fire, his face a storm of concern. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Thranduil,” Tauriel croaks, her lips numb. “The Elvenking is here.”

That silences them all.

“Here?” Fili finally says, his voice hitching like a fish abruptly swung onto dock.

Balin’s eyes slide shut and he nods. “Well. That is a development.”

“What in Durin’s name is he doing here?” Dwalin demands. “This was to be informal.”

“And why wasn’t he at the table?” Kili adds. “Where was he?”

She can only shake her head. 

“What did he say to you?” he presses. “Tauriel, what did he say?”

How can she explain, when others are here? “Nothing I will repeat.”

The ever-present anger leaps forward, and it’s only by a desperate squeeze on Kili’s wrist that she aborts its eruption. 

“Did he say why he was here?” Balin asks.

So many variations on the same question and yet she cannot answer a single one. He had swooped down upon her like a hawk upon a mouse and so overwhelmed her she had not been able to collect her wits. Suddenly, she isn’t sure the entire exchange was even real. Could it have been a mad vision? With a sudden, terrible conviction, she blurts, “I endanger everything. I am not welcome at the table. You were wrong to include me, and if this negotiation fails, it will be because of me.”

The way they’re all looking at her, alarmed and confused, makes her so deeply ashamed, heat pricks at the tips of her ears and in the corners of her eyes. “Perhaps you should sit, lass,” Balin says gently. 

Tauriel will not. She doesn’t want to sit. She wants to flee. She wants to go somewhere safe, but in this moment, safety is a distant, impossible thing. She should have just accepted her grief when she awoke in Dale and never tried to go to Erebor at all. 

But Fili would be dead.

No, Fili would not. It would have worked out. The Hobbit would still have convinced Thorin to give up the jewels Thranduil claimed and Fili would still be saved. 

Kili says he would have gone after her, but she is an Elf, clever and capable. She could have disappeared into the world and made certain he never found her. He would have recovered and moved on. 

Instead, Tauriel, reckless and selfish, so very, very selfish, blind with greed for the man she loves, has unwittingly raised the tension between two kingdoms that were pursuing a tentative peace. It doesn’t matter that Kili told her she was being righteous. Thranduil _himself_ came to Dale to notify _her_ in no uncertain terms how he felt about her meddling. He had not banished her in person, sending a messenger in his stead. Now, he’s here, _he left Mirkwood_ , a thing he has only done during times of war. 

She needs air. She shouldn’t have come in here. She suddenly can’t breathe. Panic - smoke rising, choking, heat swelling up behind her-

With a great surge of motion, Kili snaps, grabbing her and pulling her down into a chair beside him, taking her nerveless hands in her own. “Listen to me,” he says under his breath. “Whatever he said is meaningless-”

“It is _not_ meaningless!” Tauriel is on her feet again before she can stop herself. “He came here - he _left_ his halls - to find _me_.”

She needs _Sigrid_. Sigrid, who has been a constant companion, who is learning everything that goes on in this city, who didn’t tell her. Sigrid, who might not have anything to tell. How can Tauriel open her mouth and say _please tell me if the king of the Woodland Realm wanders these halls because otherwise I have taken leave of my senses?_

“We need,” she makes herself say, “to talk to the Lord of Dale.” 

Kili shoots Fili a look and the brothers silently confer. She watches it happen. Fili is as thrown as she is with the news and if he seeks out Bard on his own, there is a chance his tongue might fail. Kili won’t let that happen, but he will no sooner leave her than abandon his brother. 

“This has been poorly communicated,” Dwalin growls. “Sprung on us like a trap. We will not stand for such insult!”

At that moment, Sigrid herself hurries into the room, out of breath, skidding to a halt when she sees Tauriel’s face. “ _Oh_. He found you.”

Tauriel suddenly wishes it were truly a fever-dream.

Dwalin glowers. “He did indeed.”

“He just arrived,” she says breathlessly, wringing her hands. “Not half an hour ago. He came right into the palace and immediately asked where you were. Oh, Tauriel! I tried to delay him-”

As if from a great distance, Tauriel feels herself calmly walk to Sigrid and enfold her in an embrace. “You are not at fault,” she says into the girl’s ear. “I promise you this.”

Tears well up in Sigrid’s eyes. “But you _look_ so-”

That night in Lake-town, her body singing with anxiety, Tauriel had held herself still. She tries now to channel that same authority. Turning back to the Dwarves, she says in what she hopes is a level tone, “I should not have come-”

“You are here,” Balin says curtly, cutting her off. “We made no agreement that stipulated who would accompany us.” More gently, he says, “Lass, now we do need to know what he said.”

This isn’t happening. She looks to Kili and a flash of understanding blooms across his face, followed immediately by a flush of fury. “He questioned my choices,” she makes herself say. “He intended to sow doubt in my mind. He spoke disparagingly. He...questioned the fitness of the Lords Under the Mountain.”

“What a shock,” Dwalin deadpans, leather creaking as he crosses his arms. “And how did you answer?”

“I denied it!” She doesn’t mean to speak so harshly, but Tauriel feels like an overstrung bow and it cannot be controlled. Crossing back to the fire, she clenches her teeth. “I have told you, I am not false. If I agreed with him, I would not have come to Erebor.”

“You follow the young prince,” he grumbles. “If he went to the moon, you’d follow him there.”

“And if it is true? He is in Erebor, so therefore am I. I do not ask that you trust me. I know I have no right to demand that of you.” She clasps shaking hands behind her back, trying to focus on the warmth of the fire behind her. “I denied to agree with him and that is the truth.”

“Yet you won’t share the details.”

It rushes out, a furious, wounded flood that tastes of wrath and rot: “I am not welcome here. I am not welcome in the negotiations and I was not welcome to provide information. He accused you of locking me up. I am unwell and unfit, my judgement deeply impaired, so I am plotting against him. He spoke of the dragon being a punishment you brought down on yourselves. That there was a sickness upon Durin’s line that will continue so long as it exists and I exploit it for my own nefarious gain.” She takes a shaking breath. “I am well-versed with his opinions on the attack on Erebor and the struggle that followed. None of that is new. What came today was his anger with me. He favored me in his court and I betrayed him. I wounded his pride. I raised a weapon against him and spoke against him in front of his soldiers. There will never be forgiveness for that and having me here on the side of Dwarves is enough to force him from his isolation.” Her voice trembles despite her resolve. “He is very angry.”

Sigrid’s cornflower eyes are huge, a mix of shock and no small amount of disbelief. Tauriel had hoped, _oh_ , she had hoped that she could keep her treachery from Bard’s children. Tilda regards her with endearing worship, Bain always with a shy grin, and to Sigrid, she is a welcome respite from the pressures of being thrust into a position of power once completely unconsidered. Tauriel would sooner die than harm these children, but right now, Sigrid edges toward the door. “Should I get Da?” she asks hesitantly.

“An explanation,” Dwalin growls, “would be _most_ appreciated.”

Kili makes a movement to come comfort her, but Tauriel shakes her head. At the slightest contact, she will shatter and she has no idea what will come after.

In short order, Bard arrives with Sigrid and Bain on his heels. “Indeed, the Elvenking just arrived,” Bard says, his face dark with displeasure. “There is a large company of soldiers with him. He didn’t say why.”

“And you did not think to tell us?” Balin asks. “It puts us at a significant disadvantage.”

“As I said, he just arrived.”

“One of us encountered him in the hall.”

The Lord of Dale scrubs a hand across his face. “I swear to you, this was not my intent.”

“Easy words,” Dwalin says. “Explain why we shouldn’t leave right now.”

“If you want to leave, then leave! I offered my house as a meeting place and that is all it is. I will not turn away a king who has given much in support of my people.”

“Was that an insult?”

“No,” Bard snaps. “It’s a statement. They _offered_ us aid. It was not the Elves who brought Lake-town to ruin and broke their promise of treasure.”

Both Fili and Kill swell like wargs provoked. “Take that back!” Fili demands. 

“Do you deny it?”

“Let’s take a breath,” Balin breaks in, his tone iron-calm and allowing no dissent. “There have been regrettable circumstances.” Holding up a hand to forestall protest from Bard: “We acknowledge it. We regret it. We cannot change what has happened, but we are working in good faith for the betterment of both our peoples. However, this meeting was understood to be between emissaries. The Elvenking’s arrival upsets that balance.”

“Indeed it does.” Bard crosses his arms. “What would you like to do?”

“Let us discuss it among ourselves. We will inform you as to our conclusion.”

Sigrid gives Tauriel one last searching look, but Bard puts an arm around her shoulders and gently guides her away.

In the silence that follows, the fire pops and crackles cheerfully, as if a seismic shift in power does not warrant even the smallest consideration. “Well,” Fili finally says. “What do we do?”

“He said you were unwell.” Kili seeks out her eyes with urgency, his scar twisted with concern. “Tauriel, what does that mean?”

“It means he can see no rational reason why I would stay in your company.”

“But you are well?”

At this moment, she isn’t. Stunned, heartsick, her body empty as a bell and ringing with shock, she wants all of this to be a dream. “Yes,” she lies, “well enough.”

He doesn’t believe her. 

Turning back to Fili, she says, “I am the liability here. You need the Elvenking. You need him more than he needs you.”

“He was happy enough to accept our gems in the past,” Balin mutters. “It will come again. I won’t even wager on it.”

“Erebor needs _food_.”

“Aye,” he says. “And since merchants rarely venture far enough north to skirt the forest, having it pass through the Woodland Realm is our preference, but we can handle a few lean seasons if it means avoiding more conflict. We extended a hand he does not deserve and how he reacted is on him.”

Helplessness surges into her throat. The Old Forest Road is treacherous at the best of times, passing as it does through the darkest, most corrupted parts of Mirkwood. It dazzles the senses even of unwary Elves, but the alternative is either the north, or twice that distance to the south. A small company could survive with escort, but no Elves will deign to such employment and Tauriel herself would be driven off on sight.

Balin is still speaking. “You yourself said other trade comes up the River Running. In the old days, we had good relations with both Dale and Lake-town and they brokered many agreements. We paid them in good coin.”

“We have no shortage of coin,” Kili grumbles.

“And lucky we do,” Balin snaps. “‘We are in a stronger position for having it.” He looks from brother to brother. “We all knew this was a difficult proposal.”

“We were at the table! We were working with them! We were making headway until _Thranduil_ showed up.”

“He has ultimate authority over his people, lad. Better for us to have our petition dismissed now than after weeks of negotiation.”

“We’ve worked so hard on this,” Fili says. Tauriel can hear the stress in his voice, the frustration and defeat hanging just behind the words. “We’ve spent so much time.”

“Aye,” Balin says, a touch more gentle. “That is how these things go. If another negotiation is offered, we are prepared. More than that, what we’ve done will not go to waste. We’ve put to paper what we need. Come traders from the south, we are all that more ready to engage with them.”


	23. Chapter 23

They return to Erebor, empty-handed and seething. In lieu of walking into the lake and letting it swallow her whole, Tauriel fully intends to return to her borrowed rooms and never come out, but the look Kili gives her could reshape iron, so she tucks herself away and follows. 

Thorin hears the recounting without comment and then looks directly at Tauriel. “And you say he came for you?”

“Those were his words.”

His lips thin, looking from her to Kili, who is a dark clot of fury waiting for the slightest provocation and holding himself as if he’s expecting to block and return a punch. Eager to block and return a punch, even.

The censure never comes. “Fine,” Thorin says tiredly. “So be it.”

“Indeed,” Balin agrees.

In this moment, Thorin is focused on Kili, something pinched at the corner of his eyes. Is it concern? “The ravens have sighted our kin near the Grey Mountains. They will be here by week’s end.”

There are a few other things said. When it’s over and they’re all leaving, Thorin says Kili’s name with a gentle softness Tauriel has never heard. “Stay. Talk to me, my sister-son.”

A silence stretches out, both Fili and Tauriel holding their breath as Kili stiffens between them. “No,” he finally says with a brittle calm. “I won’t.”

* * *

The evening is strained and uncomfortable. Kili doesn’t want to talk to anyone, Fili is down to his very last drop of coherence and Tauriel hurts so much she wants...she doesn’t know what she wants. Sleep perhaps, her body against Kili’s. Sunshine. Deep grass and the smell of summer. 

After Fili stumbles off to bed, she follows Kili to his room. “I will walk you back,” he offers. 

“If you even come near my door, I will make you stay.”

“It won’t be difficult.”

“You cannot.”

In the end, she makes the journey by herself, tall, beardless and utterly alone. 

* * *

They find themselves in a room in Dale. When or how, it doesn’t matter. There is no context. There doesn’t need to be. 

His mouth finds hers, hot and eager, and the sensation blooms like ripples in still water. They fall onto the bed, tangled together, hands searching, searching. 

There is no hesitation. Sliding one knee between her thighs, he puts his mouth to her collarbone. In an urgent flurry, clothes are unlaced, unbuckled, pushed aside as boots hit the floor. As soon as her blouse falls open, he’s there, kissing skin, the rough calluses of his palms sliding over her breasts. She arches up against him, pressing herself to his hips. 

He falls free from his trousers, thick and heavy, and she immediately rocks up to surround him. With a gasp, he thrusts into her and _oh_. 

The key and the keyhole. Everything aligns, breaths and hearts and bodies, and when he starts to move, slick and full inside her, she loses all sense of anything except the electric contact of their bodies, the grind of their hips, the way the muscles in his back and buttocks move under her hands. 

All the moments she’s dreamed of this, of swallowing him and consuming him: this is all of it. She wraps her legs around him, drawing him in further and further. His body is blistering against hers, solid and steady, covering her, surrounding her. The movement is sloppy, urgent, the contact of their bodies echoing in their voices on each breath. 

She needs him. She needs all of him. Harder, faster, his mouth on her neck and his shoulders rippling and sweat-drenched under her palms. She clings to him, clutches at him, claws at his skin to bring him closer. His breath is harsh and sharp in her ear, his voice rough as it trips on her name. 

In that moment, she thinks wildly that this is perfection, that there will never be another moment without him inside her. They are bound this way. They will spend centuries locked together, a never-ending, keening crescendo. 

He whines against her, fever-hot, kiss-swollen lips and eyes blown wide with want. His hands pull her against him, his body grinding against her. The friction rises like smoke, twigs rubbed together with the smoky promise of immolation. 

Just as she reaches her crest, just as he moans his intent, just as the dizziness takes over, as all her awareness spirals into the boiling connection of their bodies-

Tauriel wakes. 

Furious, she squeezes her eyes shut, trying to hold onto the dream, but it’s useless. She reaches down, desperately soaked, but thin fingers are no substitute of the weight of a dream, and it ends with a plaintive whimper. 

She presses her face into her pillow and screams.

* * *

If Erebor was abuzz when the Iron Hills folk were due to arrive, the imminent arrival of their kin from the Blue Mountains sets the entire city to a feverish joy. Tauriel feels brittle with the energy, Thranduil’s conversation not a week past echoing in her head:

 _You disappoint me, Tauriel_. 

She can handle his anger. She is no stranger to his volatile nature. He has chastised her for any number of incidents, from a hunt he considered unsuccessful to the constant encroachment of spiders into the forest. That last had frustrated her the most. The spiders had been nesting in Dol Guldur, beyond borders he had ordered not to be crossed, and he very well knew that. On most occasions, he had allowed her to argue with him as if he found it amusing. She would always back down, of course, because he was the Elvenking and she nothing more than a Silvan foundling, but on very rare occasions, he might acknowledge her point and perhaps even adjust his orders. 

But _you disappoint me_ , the tone flat, almost bored, the idle wave of his hand that dismissed her and all her centuries of service. She had once held his praise to be the highest reward she could earn, and despite herself, despite her fury at his treatment of the Dwarves and his narrow-minded refusal to consider anything beyond Mirkwood, _you disappoint me_ is devastating. 

Kili was right that Tauriel did what she held to be good and necessary. She saved him, and she would do it a thousand times more if it meant even one more moment in his presence. She cannot think of a single action that could have been different. 

It just _hurts_. 

* * *

As soon as they’ve been back from Dale, with Erebor preparing itself for an unknown host of newcomers, Thorin spends the most of his days holding court beneath the shining Arkenstone, Fili and Kili by his side. Tauriel has no place in the proceedings and with any offer to aid in the preparations firmly and often sharply rebuffed, she retreats to her rooms to sit alone with her grief.

She hates her apartment. She knows exactly what Thorin meant in housing her on a well-travelled boulevard, but now that the streets are busy and only promising to get even busier, she feels trapped. She cannot leave without what feels like all of Erebor turning to stare, piercing her with a thousand scrutinies, each one mistrustful. The celebration welcoming the Iron Hills and Kili’s enthusiastic introductions helped for a few days, but as everyone settles in, those old enough to remember the arrival of the dragon find themselves reliving the trauma in scorched hallways and broken thoroughfares. Families mourn those lost in battle. The treachery of the Elves is inextricably linked to dragonfire and war, and Tauriel is a bitter reminder.

So she hides. There have been passing comments, not even bothering to be subtle, the kindest of which is that her rooms should go to a deserving Dwarven family. If she keeps the door closed and the shutters drawn, she can pretend it’s empty, dark, abandoned, inhabited by no one. 

She lies on her bed, sunk deep into meditation, her mind forcefully as blank as she imagines the room to be. 

She has already ruined the negotiation. If she is to stay, she should be as the Elves bid her: silent, invisible.

****

She is caught in a deeply-anxious dream about spiders that she senses but cannot see when the door explodes. 

Even sleep-muddled, her Elven reflex is instant. Grabbing her blades from the nightstand, she rolls off the bed and into a defensive corner, crouched and ready to erupt into violence. From the bedroom, she can see the door swinging on broken hinges, kicked in by the same two backlit shadows standing in the doorway.

Kili and Fili, and Kili is _furious_. 

“You’re moving,” Kili says abruptly, not even waiting for her to rise. “Now. We’re getting what you have and leaving.”

“Kili-”

“ _Now_.”

“Where would you have me go?”

“With me. The palace.”

“That will make it worse,” she snaps. “You know this to be true.”

“It cannot _get_ worse.”

She looks to Fili for help, but he, too, is boiling with anger. “It isn’t safe here,” he says. 

Tauriel opens her mouth to protest, but Kili is already dragging her out the ruined door, spinning her like a doll and pointing. For a moment, she’s too dazed by shock and the lingering effects of the nightmare to see what he’s seeing, but then there it is: across the wall by her door are runes, scrawled in charcoal and each the size of her hand. With a sharp chill, she realizes two things: what is written is not meant for her and whatever it means is not complimentary. 

“A full day,” Kili grits out. “You’ve been missing for a full day, and I come by to find _this_.”

“...what does it mean?”

“It means,” Fili says, “that you are protected by the king’s authority.”

It doesn’t. She knows that. She can’t decide what frightens her more: the fact that they aren’t telling her or the intensity of the reaction. As they stand there, Kili suddenly snares a passing street sweep and growls, “How long has that been there?”

The man’s eyes go huge. “I-”

“No more. Do you understand? She-” a fierce gesture at Tauriel- “is here by the king’s leave. Do you think Thorin would suffer an Elf otherwise?”

“N-no, my lords-”

“Clean it. I want no trace left. And if you know anything about the one who wrote it, you’d be wise to report directly to me.”

As the poor man rushes off to round up brush and water, Tauriel can only stand transfixed by how quickly the brothers bundle up her things. “Get dressed,” Kili instructs. “Arm yourself.”

That jolts her into action. Going back in the bedroom, she slips on an overdress and buckles her light leather armor into place, strapping on daggers and lacing boots as fast as she can. “There cannot be a need for such rush-”

Fili pauses to look at her as Kili purposefully walks through the main room, scooping up packets of herbs, tools for weapon maintenance, and the few little decorative things she’s allowed herself. “I understand grief,” he says, voice low, “and I understand needing time alone, but even I didn’t need Kili to translate what that says. We didn’t know what we’d find in here. Hold this.” That last, a small cup given to her by Tilda, currently holding a thriving tuft of moss. “Leave the bedding.”

Half a breath later, they’re pushing her out the door, the rooms behind stripped of their meager contents. Outside, a small crowd has gathered, the street sweep now frantically scrubbing at the wall. 

“This is unacceptable,” Fili announces grimly. “Whoever did this lacks all honor.”

If more is said, Tauriel doesn’t hear because Kili is all but bodily hauling her through the street. People fall away at their passing, tension swirling in their wake. 

Balin meets them on the palace steps, visibly relaxing as he sees her. “This way,” he says in welcome. 

After a great commotion, Tauriel finds herself standing in the middle of a room a mirror to so many along this hall, the cup of moss still held in nerveless hands, her belongings piled on and around the table. “I will _kill_ them,” Kili fumes, stalking around the apartment as if some trap is hidden in the cold fire or the empty washroom. 

“Do I not get to know what it said?” The activity has finally caught up with her, anger surging forward as a backdraft to confusion and alarm.

“ _No-_ ”

“There are some things that cannot be translated well,” Balin says. “It was a general statement on the consequence of Elven treachery to Dwarven honor.”

She _knows_ that’s not what it said. Worse has been said to her face, and the times Kili has heard it, he’s all but launched himself at the speaker, but not once has she seen such naked fury, not like this. This is separate and distinct from the omnipresent seething he carries beneath his skin. “My presence here is generally unwelcome.”

Fili crosses his arms. “This is a bit stronger.”

When Kili finally comes back from a thorough inspection of the balcony, his hands fisted in his shaggy hair, he’s shaking with the aftermath of anxiety. He drops onto the wide stone bench near the bedroom entrance and puts his head between his knees. When she comes to sit beside him, he grabs at her arm and pulls her hand to his mouth, just breathing against her knuckles. 

For a long time, the four of them sit in silence, a sense of a close escape somehow thick in the air. “I will tell the others all is well,” Balin finally says. 

As Kili huffs against her skin, Fili haltingly begins to talk. It comes out that it was Glath son of Glain who alerted the palace. No one in the area could name the culprit, but he was adamant it was maliciously done. At the news, Kili had exploded from his seat beside Thorin and sprinted as if the dragon himself were on his heels. 

Tauriel hasn’t seen Glath since just after the Orc fight, and that was months ago. Her borrowed home in Erebor is known to everyone, but for him of all people… Perhaps he’s thawing a bit himself? He could have very easily done what so many did and simply walk past, but somehow, he decided to help her. It’s so oddly touching that her chest aches.

If she sees him, she will thank him for his concern. He will probably not appreciate it, but she does. 

That night, Kili follows her to bed and without saying a word, wraps his arms around her and holds her fast the whole night. If she wasn’t so rattled, she would take advantage of his presence, but something about his embrace brings back the taste of blood and gravel in her mouth, so she just lets herself be held.

* * *

Thorin again calls his nephews to his side, specifically excluding Tauriel, and although Kili outright reaches for his sword, digging in his heels and announcing his intent to stay and protect her, Fili drags him into his room, eliciting a furious disagreement in a volume only barely muffled by the stone. Tauriel can’t make out any of the words, but when the brothers emerge, Kili is missing his weapon as if he’s just been forcefully amputated and Fili looks as close to murder as she’s ever seen. 

“Do _not_ , “ Kili growls at her, “be alone today.”

“Tell me the reason-”

“ _Please,_ ” and now the tone is desperate. “ _Amrâlimê_. I am begging you.”

She wants to scream at him, frustration and anger rising in her throat, but instead she says, “Yes,” and watches with clenched fists as Fili drags him away. 

* * *

Eventually, she stalks away with her whetstone and her blades to find Bofur. He is exactly where expected, tucked away in one of the large workshops adjacent to the palace and whittling some impossibly tiny piece for the articulated toy goat he’s assembling. 

“Hello!” he says in greeting. “Always good to have a little company. Hand me that chisel, if you please.”

Of all the other Dwarves, she likes him best. In Lake-town, he’d blinked at her appearance, and then accepted her without reservation. Perhaps it was because she’d healed Kili or her part in guiding them through the inferno, or his own good nature, but since then, he has always seemed genuinely glad to see her and more than willing to provide a cheerful commentary on whatever he’s doing. 

He natters a bit, pulling down a magnifying lens to slip a miniscule joint into place and finally says, “I take it Thorin’s got the lads and they’ve forbidden you to leave the palace.”

“That is indeed the case.”

“Justified, that. Mm, awl at your elbow, please.”

She hands it over. “Truly?”

“Couldn’t have gotten a clearer message. Nasty business.”

“I could not read it,” she says testily. “How am I supposed to gauge such a threat?”

Bofur pauses, shifting in his seat to crack what sounds like every single vertebra. “Well,” he says, “it basically said ‘you’re dead and we hate you.’”

“That is not the truth of it.”

“It gets the point across.”

“Not to me.”

He rubs at his face. “Look, if the lads won’t tell you, I won’t either.”

“I know I am unwelcome,” Tauriel snaps. “I know my presence is resented. I have been made aware of it from the day I arrived. I am not ignorant of my reputation here. I ask again: what did it mean?”

He takes a deep breath, and then finally closes his eyes as he recites in a bit of a sing-song, a tone at odds with what comes next. “‘Here lies the rotting corpse of one fouler than Orc excrement and more irrevocably false than the immortal king of Elves himself.’” He shakes his head. “I didn’t see it spelled out, but it’s a statement. The lads thought you dead and they had good cause to.”

Oh. Kili’s reaction suddenly makes terrible sense, and a cold chill slithers in her gut.

“Thank you for telling me,” she says. 

“Hold yourself carefully.”

There’s a long moment where she contemplates her words. “Bofur,” she says quietly, “how badly do I damage the king’s legitimacy?”

He considers carefully. He can seem bumbling and oblivious, but he misses nothing, not when it matters. “We would not have won the final battle without you. That’s bare fact. Your people did a number on our cousins from the Iron Hills, but more than one saw you rush to our aid when all the rest turned away. Loyalty goes a long way with our kind.”

“They think I have corrupted Kili.”

“Oh, aye.” He laughs. “There are many who would call love a wild corruption.”

Something shudders in her chest. They’ve tried so hard, and it’s been _agonizing_ , but not hidden enough-

“Everybody knows, lass,” Bofur says gently. “Any that’s got eyes. It’s been a hard road for all of us and you’re the only thing that makes him smile. Anyway,” he adds, stretching, “I promise you nothing that can be written on a wall will come close to what his mum will say.”

It must show in her entire body because he laughs. “Luck’s on your side there. He’s everyone’s favorite child. Even for this, it’ll be hard to tell him no.”


	24. Chapter 24

Even if Tauriel hadn’t known to look for her, she would still recognize the princess Dis at once. Tall for a Dwarf, with the same intense gravitas as her brother that draws all attention without having to command it, she is as beautiful and fierce as the mountain around her. 

Her relation to Thorin is undeniable, but where Thorin’s are an unreadable gray, Dis has the same rich hazel eyes as her son, which search out and spear her children even before acknowledging her brother. Her entire posture goes rigid and she obliterates the distance between them with five determined strides, wrapping them in a crushing embrace. They press their faces into her neck and for a long time, no one moves. 

Clearing her throat, she finally pulls back to put a hand on each son’s cheek. “Where are my sons?” she demands, a love made all the more fierce by long absence. “Two youths went into the wild, but all I see here are two grown men.”

Once, Kili might have grinned and twisted under the contact, something irreverent and charming on his tongue. Tauriel feels it in her bones. Instead, he closes his eyes as Dis brushes a thumb across the deep scar that splits his face, and remains still. 

“Was your journey easy?” Fili asks hoarsely. He’s holding himself so stiffly he’s visibly shaking, Even from this distance, Tauriel can see Dis’s critical scrutiny of his pinched, weary countenance with a hard set of her jaw. 

“We suffered little hardship, even so far north. Word came of your great battle. You must have emptied the entire range of Orcs, because we encountered very, very few.”

“We welcome you home, sister,” Thorin intones, every inch a king opening his gates to valued kin.

“Home,” she says evenly, taking a hand of each son and not moving to greet her brother. “Indeed.”

Kili darts a glance to Tauriel, something too deep and agonized for words. This was never going to be a happy homecoming and her heart is a raw wound in her chest. At that moment, Dis turns her head, interrupting their silent communication, and Tauriel is suddenly _seen_ , her entire being flayed open for an examination far more intense and deliberate than any that could ever be summoned by Thorin. She makes herself incline her head, arranging her face in what she hopes is neutral deference and not bone-white fear. This is the person on whom her future rests. Kili is so confident they can win her over, but Tauriel has lost too much to recklessly expend what precious hope remains.

“An Elf,” Dis observes. “A strange creature to see in our ancestral halls.”

“Mother, this is Tauriel,” says Kili, his voice steady. 

“An ally,” Fili interjects, a warning to forestall the larger conversation for a moment when an entire kingdom isn’t listening with undisguised interest.

Dis raises an eyebrow. “An _ally?_ ”

“An ally.” 

“I look forward to the tale.”

Any more greetings are set aside as weary travellers are welcomed into Erebor’s great halls. As Tauriel once did, they look up in awe at the soaring architecture, some with tear-stained faces, others falling to their knees and kissing the stone floor of a place they never thought could be reclaimed. 

The room swells with what can only be called rapture. They are all so tired, so overwhelmed, so joyful to be here and so stunned by what ‘here’ truly means. 

“So few,” Thorin says. “Why have the rest not come?”

“Some stayed,” Dis says. “You cannot expect them to uproot their lives.”

“Their lives lay _here_.”

She has never let go of her sons. “Not everyone carries your dream, brother of mine.”

“Would they forsake what is rightfully theirs-” 

Her eyes flash. “Do not _you_ forsake those who willingly came. Look at them. These are our people, Thorin. They have come a very long way and yet you only comment on those absent. Go among them. Greet them. They came for _you_.” More softly, she turns to her sons, kissing them each on the forehead. “Fili, Kili, my heart overflows to see you. Let us help our kin into their new home.”

Tauriel finds herself swept up in the crowd, shouldering bundles from quivering arms, directing heavily-laden carts and the beasts that bear them to the stabling area. As soon as the great company had been sighted, there was a mad rush to turn the vast entrance hall into a temporary living space, braziers set to brighten the space like noon, food and water laid in as if there were no shortages as all. Those already in Erebor now have a good understanding of how to repopulate neighborhoods, and in the following days, a census will be taken and people given their new homes. 

For now, there is a great clamor of voices, a din of joy and relief. The sky is just turning pink with dawn as the last of the column straggles in, limping and thoroughly spent, and are gently escorted to food and warmth

Tauriel doesn’t sleep. Neither does the royal family, circling and talking, offering arms and greetings in turn. Every time Tauriel catches a glimpse of Kili, he is being embraced by someone who knows him well, kissed by his elders and surrounded with an army of youngsters. Youths run to him and for a moment, he becomes one of them just as he must have been before he left. There is much exclamation over his scar, and he tosses his hair and regales his listeners with wild tales of its provenance. 

She finds for herself so much less fear. These newcomers didn’t watch an army of Elves meet the Iron Hills Dwarves in battle. Most of them are too young to feel the sting of long-past betrayal. There have clearly been associations with Elves from elsewhere in the world because more than once, she’s greeted with a warm, “ _Mae govannen_!” 

For a brief few hours, Tauriel doesn’t worry. She doesn’t fear. She lifts crates from wagons and helps assemble tents. Once, a child is abruptly deposited in her arms while its mother dashes after a sibling, just as her eyes find Kili’s across the hall. There is such a peace about him, a deep and uncomplicated happiness, and when he sees the toddler squirming and grabbing at her hair, he winks and mouths “ _Amrâlimê,_ ” before turning back to his kin.

Everything will be made well. In that moment, she knows it in her heart. 

* * *

The first days pass in a blaze of light. Iron Hills engineers have been waiting for the aid of their cousins, and within a day, giant crystal lanterns - all of which Tauriel had thought merely pretty decoration if she’d even noticed at all - flare into being like an explosion of phosphor. No one will tell her if the light comes from magical or alchemical means, but the effect is the color and intensity of daylight.

“There used to be glass in those windows,” Balin says, pointing to caverns set deeply into the high walls, the crystals hidden within still almost too bright to see. “It was as if the sun flooded in from the sky itself. There were huge, stained glass pieces honoring our forefathers.” He turns to her with misty eyes. “Just to see this again, lass…”

She _loves_ this Dwarven sunlight, even if it isn’t real, even if it isn’t the same to her Elvish senses. Her vision is keen, but even so, colors once invisible come alive in the halls, ribbons of gold and blue twisting through green stone, mica glittering like the moon on fresh snow. Erebor had been beautiful, but now it comes alive with broad, unselfconscious glory. It is so dazzling and so un-Elven that she often finds herself lost in the design.

All of Erebor is in a frenzy settling the newcomers and Tauriel throws herself into any task that welcomes her. She pauses only to wolf a meal now and then, sleep a need that hasn’t made itself urgent. The atmosphere itself is nourishing, buoyant and full of life. 

The brothers pull her back to her own rooms the morning after their kin’s arrival, Kili picking up her breastplate and pointedly handing it over. “You have to wear this and your daggers.”

“How many of your kin go armored and armed?” she demands. “If I go through these halls-”

“Many wear daggers!”

“Many are not Elves!”

“It doesn’t look much like armor,” Fili breaks in. “And your hair hides your weapons well.” 

“Will I not be seen as a threat? Is that not how this came to pass?”

“The one who wrote that _kakhf_ is still unknown,” Kili says, coming to buckle her scabbards as if she isn’t doing it quickly enough. Even around Fili, they rarely touch each other, but now, his hand lingers at her waist, steady and comforting, as the other adjusts the fall of her hair. “Please,” he says, almost plaintive, and it’s as if no one else exists but they two. “I cannot lose you.”

She thinks of that night on the roof in Dale, of words coming out of him like thick strings of blood. “I am quick and clever,” she says. “Have you not seen it?”

A small smile creeps across his lips. “I have.” 

In the corner of her vision, Tauriel sees Fili conspicuously head toward the door, and in that blink of privacy, Kili pulls her down for a fierce, demanding kiss. It’s the first time since Dale she has truly kissed him and want flares brighter than the crystal lamps. 

They aren’t alone. There is an unspoken understanding that now that the Princess Dis is here, they will never be alone.

* * *

In a handful of days, Erebor settles down. Fili and Kili are desperate to have time with their mother, but they are princes and Dis is a firm, practical leader. Thorin might be king, but Dis is a force to be reckoned with, never still, and rather than argue, he steps back to let her work. Tauriel suspects he has little choice in the matter. 

For herself, Tauriel finds Dis fascinating. She is terrifying, surpassing Thorin and even Thranduil himself in the space of a heartbeat. Dis minces no words, offering blunt praise as often as she issues directives. Her thick, dark beard is carefully plaited up her cheeks and into a neat crown of braids at the back of her head, her sleeves rolled up over mighty forearms to better facilitate whatever she needs her hands to do. Kili looks so much like her it’s uncanny, but blond, bright Fili also carries the unmistakable stamp of his mother’s features in his own face. 

Dis’s people love her. She stops and listens to anyone who needs an ear, her answers honest and thoughtful. She carries herself with Kili’s deep kindness and Fili’s thoughtful sobriety, but a flash of her grin tells Tauriel their childhood home was filled with warmth and laughter. Even amid the chaos of homecoming, she has time to take up a child to wrestle or put a comforting arm around an old man’s shoulders. 

It makes Tauriel’s chest ache. She desperately wants this woman to like her, not just on Kili’s behalf but suddenly for herself, the lost child, the outcast, the scorned, rising up to clamor for even just the smallest particle of maternal affection. 

She feels all of this as a physical pressure, and then Dis will look across the room directly at her, garden-brown eyes holding a scrutiny even more frank and calculating than Thorin’s. 

_I love him_ , Tauriel wants to cry out. _I will keep him safe and treasured until the end of his days, and then I will hold his memory as the greatest portion of my heart until the end of Arda._

But she cannot say these things, not when his mother holds her with clear and constant suspicion. 


End file.
